A monument – the first in Italy – to remember Tina Merlin “one of the most important Italian journalists” in its territory, the Belluno area. This is the proposal made during the commemoration, thirty years after his death, by the Minister for Relations with Parliament and Reforms Federico D’Incà, also a native of Belluno. “In recent years – said D’Incà – a great debate has been opened precisely on the need to remember the female figures who have given prestige to Italy, who represent examples in all the fields in which they have ventured”. And a statue of Merlin, who as a journalist on the pages of “L’Unità” recounted the Vajont tragedy and denounced the conditions of the workers, will be a “manifesto of the battle for gender equality, dedicated to one of the greatest feminists and intellectuals of the country. I would like this cultural journey – said the minister – to start from here: in Italy there are no statues for female journalists, monuments that celebrate their work ». A change of pace which, according to the representative of the Government, is necessary in order to “reverse the paradigm” based on the “excess of masculine and patriarchal symbolism. We cannot wait any longer, the country has been waiting for too long: it would be a way to continue its work, for women, for young people, for the rights of all. To radically change our culture starting from the language, the symbols, the centrality of women who have made Italy great as Tina Merlin did ».
Few, hidden and “anonymous”: because Italy has so few monuments dedicated to women
chiara baldi
In Italy there are about 150 monuments dedicated to female figures. Many of these, according to a mapping carried out by the association «Do you recognize me? I am a cultural heritage professional “, but they are located in side streets, far from the center and in most cases they represent not specific characters but concepts or categories: in Italian cities it is easier, in fact, to find a statue that represents” the partisans Or “the mondine” rather than historical figures who have literally changed the history of our country. As in the case of Nilde Iotti or Tina Anselmi or, precisely, Tina Merlin, whose political and journalistic action is not celebrated with any work. Furthermore, no statue is dedicated to professional figures such as midwives, office workers or scientists. But the promoters of the investigation – Ludovica Piazzi and Rosanna Carrieri, both members of the association – also pointed out another problem. And that is that in many cases the women represented are accompanied by men (or children) and, often, their representation is strongly sexualized. This is also because the works are almost always made by men (90 percent of the 120 statues with certain attribution are) and only in five cases out of a hundred is there a collaboration between male and female artists.
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But the presence of women is also scarce in street names. According to Female Toponymy, an association that has been monitoring the nomenclature of streets, squares, lakes and gardens in Italian cities for over ten years, the feminization rate is 8 percent. It means that for every hundred streets named after male characters, only eight bear the name of a woman. Which in most cases is the name of a saint, a Madonna, a martyr, and only rarely is that of a scientist, politician, journalist, historian, writer or intellectual.