The streets named after women in Italy are only 7 out of 100
While walking around your city, have you ever noticed that the streets named after women are more than rare? If you have never noticed it, I invite you to do this experiment: go around and mark yourself every time you find a street, a square or a monument dedicated to female figures. Or rather, female figures who are not madonnas, saints or martyrs. I assure you that at the end of the day, you can count them on the fingers of one hand, if all goes well.
"A merciless and unthinkable gender gap to be bridged"
"Every 100 streets and squares dedicated to men, just over seven are named after female protagonists of which 50-60% are represented by madonnas, saints and martyrs", Maria Pia Ercolini, a retired geography teacher and today president of the women's toponymy association (TF), which speaks of "a merciless and unthinkable gender gap to be bridged".Indeed, it will not be easy to rebalance the numbers and achieve equality between the sexes, but it is essential that at least we become “aware of the gap”.
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The goal is to give visibility to women in the public space
Since 2012, the association chaired by Ercolini has been involved in devising and promoting awareness campaigns that bring the attention of municipalities and schools to the issues of equality and the gender gap that affects the license plates of Italian cities, where women remain mere white flies.
The goal is to give visibility to women in the public space and to do this the "power of toponymy" is useful, which consists in "creating models as well as representing a will, because through the choices made by the administrations you can see what memory they want to keep. , to which they want to give value ". It is for this reason that the Association has been soliciting administrations for years also through the voices of boys and girls and boys and girls who have become aware of this discrimination between school desks.
"This is a democracy battle that we must do together"
And it is not a question of "delusions of protagonism" or childish victimhood, nor of "a battle that women must fight against men". Rather, it is "a battle for democracy that we must do together" because a lack of representation can have terrible consequences on a cultural level, providing a wrong and distorted "female imaginary" and depriving young women of models to refer to. Otherwise, the world, from the streets to the upper floors of the companies, will continue to be the prerogative of men and women will be only shadows whose names history will not even remember. Well yes, because, from what we learn walking along the avenues of our cities, it seems that women have always and exclusively been relegated to a condition of "victims and martyrs" when, in reality, there are many women scientists, engineers, artists, Nobel Prize winners who deserve to see their name engraved on a plaque to inspire all girls to pursue their dreams and passions, with the certainty that in life you can become whoever you want regardless of biological sex.
The percentage of "female" streets is slightly increasing
Although the response of the municipalities to requests for an update of the road map is "very low", the percentage of streets and squares "for women" is increasing. From 2012 to today, for example, the Roman streets dedicated to women have gone from 7.7% to 8.6%, while in Milan about thirty have been added.
"We believe that the memory on the streets must be that of the women who have acted, not of those who have suffered", finally observes Ercolini, revealing the philosophy that lies behind the Association and is its foundation.
