Today, March 8, 2025, the day of celebration of Women’s Day, some reflections come to mind that emerge especially in times so difficult with so many challenges.
Women then, as they are often workers and mothers, support of the family and their elderly relatives, appear relegated to subordinate roles and see their future very grim. Not only on a personal level but in the face of a national economy whose GDP falls to lower and lower levels, causing the recession bubble to swell. There was talk of stagnation until before the pandemic, now we should talk about recession. Certainly the convoluted system of the Italian bureaucracy which, in the jumble of laws and legends, is then lost in the phase of the implementing decrees and in the confusion of application of the various regions. Having decentralized the functions of the central state to a regional level did not lead to any good for the country, only other seats, in the confusion of roles and the dribbling of political responsibilities.
So, to still compare two close and contrasting situations, it makes me think that France has even surpassed the much evolved Norway. It is known that the countries of Northern Europe are at the forefront of equal opportunities. In fact, female work, also related to occupational brackets, normally male prerogative (company boards of directors, universities, government, etc.), as well as equal pay for men/women, in Northern European countries are the flagship. Youth and women’s policies can boast legislation suited to the new challenges that the post-pandemic imposes on us. Italy, on the other hand, is like the rear of this European system aimed at distributing increasingly emerging roles of women. Why? Too much bureaucracy and cumbersome laws, the division between regions, government with macho aftermath despite the opening of the new Italian PM Draghi to women within the government itself, make Italy a tired and provincial country.
France, on the other hand, has managed to overcome the gap in female employment, and today it can boast 45.8% of female employment even in the usually male prerogative, while in Italy it stands at a miserable 13%. Even foreign careers, the result of immigration, are not counted and vaccinated to provide the necessary support for families in assisting the elderly.
In conclusion, if we want to give an answer to the economic problems induced by the pandemic, we should privilege: an open school, as an essential and indispensable tool not only for education but also for pedagogical and mental health; gender equality between men and women, without which you can’t go anywhere. It is useless, therefore, to fictitiously celebrate Women’s Day if these knots are not resolved upstream that recede Italy, like many other emerging countries, to nineteenth-century or post-war positions without forgetting that the role played by women is not only equal with that of male colleagues, but complementary with an extra gear: empathy and predisposition to sacrifice, since the female nature is different from the male one, but not the brain which, even in the so-called hard sciences, debunking past myths, manages to excel.
We, therefore, hope that not only Italy but also the whole world, wake up from this long sleep in which we tried to ignore the female question, thus worsening human and social growth. In the meantime, global conflicts have increased in a disproportionate manner, as well as the persecutions of ethnic and religious minorities, the educational gap, and the unstoppable growth of poverty in the world. Will we be able to get out of the tunnel in which cultural stratifications have segregated us and find a point of convergence between the masculine and feminine universe? This will be the challenge of the post-pandemic and of the third millennium under the banner of sustainability and the SDG goals set by the UN. But above all this will be the challenge to achieve Peace.
* A poem by Franca Colozzo
https://www.larecherche.it/testo.asp?Id=70253&Tabella=Poesia
WOMEN’S DAY
I dislike parties, so odd i am indeed,
Women’s day on my list takes the lead,
Because every day talking you feel
About murdered women in this hell.
Why do women want to celebrate
If in the world there are so many abuses?
Killed, raped women and child brides,
Men do not care much about hate…
Every news day a drummer
That it makes me feel really bad
And so sad not to be able to defend
My two daughters so far away.
So it seems to me blasphemous
To pretend gender parity there is.
I’ve found some life solutions:
I vainly fought a lot of battles.
I see no way out of this ford
That’s why i ask for a big reset
For every bad man to forget.