Inconvenient Women

1. The ideal woman

Opinions, innovative ideas, disputes, skills, qualifications, industriousness, fixed salary, parenting, struggle, voice; all these properties make man a genius, but woman a drawback. Drawbacks were all those women who did not accept being the ideal of a woman desired by men, whose only characteristics must have been inferiority and domesticity, but have disturbed society and politics to be actively included in them. Women such as Mozzoni, Strada, Cingolani, Jotti and many others, with their successes have gradually contributed to the birth of articles in the Italian Constitution that have led to the formation of an independent figure of women with full rights, equal to men in the different areas - social, work, political.

Art. 31 The Republic facilitates the formation of the family and the fulfilment of related tasks with economic measures and other provisions, with particular regard to large families.

It protects motherhood, infancy and youth, promoting the institutions necessary for this purpose.

Art. 37 The working woman has the same rights and, given the equality of work, the same wages that are due to the male worker. The working conditions must allow the fulfilment of her essential family function and ensure special adequate protection for the mother and child.

Art. 51 All citizens of one or the other sex can access public offices and elected on equal terms, according to the requirements established by law. To this end, the Republic promotes equal opportunities between women and men with specific measures.

2. Deception by paper

Despite the apparent progress on paper, the data clearly state that this is not the end of the struggle for gender equality, but only the beginning. The current Constitution does not reflect reality, and the rights obtained by women are not always implemented. Equality without distinction seems to be a deception, written and put into practice, but without any results, due to lack of services, speed or security. Proof of this are the numerous discriminations:

Discrimination at work: difficulties for women to reconcile work and family; scarcity of female supply. Numerous gender discriminations related to wages, access to work, insufficient support for reconciliation between motherhood and work, the small number of women in executive roles, in both elective assemblies and local national governments.

Discrimination in politics: very high disproportion in the presence between men and women in the Italian Parliament. The rules for the election exist but are not implemented.

Violence against women: the data indicate a woman killed every two days, the penalties are not enough because they are not implemented safely and quickly, and often the conduct of the aggressors is diminished. Women are often afraid to sue because they are blamed or not believed.

3. Deception by cloth

Her who claims to do something, puts it into practice but at the end of the day does not get results is Penelope, who weaves and unravels the cloth with the noble purpose of remaining faithful to her Ulysses. Penelope is a model of a ideal woman, beautiful, faithful to marriage and, with the deception by cloth, skilled in weaving, an art that binds her to the domestic environment outside of which she is non-existent. The antithesis of this model is instead Clytemnestra, the inconvenient woman who deceives and betrays her husband, and finally kills him, not remaining impassive in front of the murder of her daughter and the frequent betrayals by Agamemnon; she is endowed with intelligence, cunning and firmness, which are traditionally masculine characteristics. As in the Odyssey, we find unconvinient female characters in...

Aristophanes, Ecclesiazuse: the women of Athens, unhappy with the situation in the city, gather in assembly and, led by Praxagoras, decide to take power. Deceiving men by disguising themselves as them, they carry out a revolutionary political program.

Euripides, Medea: Jason intends to repudiate the sorceress Medea in order to marry the daughter of Creon, and she must be removed as she could represent a danger for the new couple, but with deception she succeeds in carrying out her revenge.

Euripides, Hecuba: after the former queen Hecuba, now a prisoner of war, loses her two children Polissena and Polidoro, she decides to take revenge on Polimestore, luring him and his children into her tent with deception, and with the help of the other Trojan prisoners blinds him and kills his children.

4. Other women written by men

"Considering that the peoples of the United Nations have reaffirmed in the Charter their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equality of rights of men and women, and have decided to promote social progress and a better standard of living in greater freedom [...] "

Today the rejection of discrimination between the sexes is a central point of the Declaration, founded on the principle of equality between human beings. But in ancient Roman society the role of women it was more than marginal. According to the philosophers, women were inferior

by nature, destined to follow moral rules and submit to command of man. But some women refused to accept these rules.

At the mythical origin of Rome, the she-wolf told by Livio plays a fundamental role. Probably a metaphor for Acca Larenzia, a woman who, according to Etruscan mythology, was a prostitute, who found Romulus and Remus and took care of them. She became very rich after being widowed, leaving the role.

A woman who does not follow the Roman female model is certainly Clodia. She is described above all by Catullus, an unreliable source both for his love for her and for the complexity of her figure: a woman who refused exclusivity to first deceive her husband, then her lover. Cicero, doing Clodia's portrait, called her "Clytemnestra", money-maker, accusing her of incest with her brother Clodio and of killing her husband for his possessions, and finally of not following the model of a Roman widow. Behind all this, she seems to be a figure of a real woman, strong, free, autonomous, and independent in her feelings. A woman who decides to live when she wants, who refuses to be chosen and to be seen as an object; an inconvenient woman who is made to pay for her life choices.

Tacitus reports the figure of Agrippina Minor, who did not hesitate to kill her husband to make her son Nero ascend to the throne with the aim of ruling through him. A woman far from femininity, who had a masculine behaviour, interested in politics and literature, that were considered subjects for men. She even wrote a historical work, the Commentarii, which has been lost. Figure similar to her mother Agrippina Maggiore, both eager for power, determined and strong. Even in the story of her matricide, Agrippina dies as a tragic heroine, with pride and dignity, unlike her son who commits the crime with uncertainty and anguish.

5. Women written by women

Women obviously have the ability to write history for themselves. From the classical age, women such as Sappho (Greek poetess), Hypatia (mathematician, philosopher and astronomer), Hortensia (Roman orator) and Agnodice (first Greek female doctor), have shown how artistic, technical and scientific skills are not typical of men, but women too can play a significant role in the progress of humanity.

A few examples in English literature, where, due to prejudices, female writers often had to use male pseudonyms to express themselves on the reality of the time.

Mary Shelley

denounces the patriarchal world of knowledge and power, and the science that claims to take the place of God.

The Brontë sisters

denounce the issue of education and women's rights, social conventions and the perception of the femininity of the time.

Virginia Woolf

gives voice to the human interiority, to the emotions and impressions that she puts above external reality and chronological time.

Narce Eval, 2020