Streets and squares? A male path
In 21 capitals just 6.6 percent of the streets bear the names of holy and religious women or figures who have distinguished themselves in the field of literature, art or science
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The good news is that Grazia Deledda, the Nuorese Nobel Prize-winning writer for literature, is the first secular figure to lead the ranking of women who have been given the honor of having a street that celebrates their worth. 10 Italian cities have chosen to pay tribute to the writer whose 150th anniversary of her birth is this year. But it is little consolation. In 21 capitals of regions and provinces in Italy, the streets named after people are 24572, and 1626 of these, just 6.6 percent, bear the names of holy and religious women or figures who have distinguished themselves in the field of literature, of art or science.
The curious data are published on the mappingdiversity.eu site. in the project by OBC Transeuropa and Sheldon.studio (which takes care of the graphics) built for EdjNet (European data journalism network) and edited by Giorgio Comai and Alice Corona, with Lorenzo Ferrari, Ornaldo Gjergji and Chiara Sighele. "The names of our streets - the opening reads - are not harmless urban elements, useful only for orienting us in the places we travel: they have a strong symbolic power, they have been and continue to be the result of decision-making processes linked to the legitimacy of the past, and to the construction of the collective historical memory on that past. It is no coincidence that, from the French Revolution to the Black Lives Matter protests, the political demands for change have been accompanied by moments full of symbolism linked to the renaming of streets, squares and other urban spaces ». In this site the odonomastics of contemporary Italy, that is who is visible and who remains invisible, is faced with a gender perspective.
If a Nobel Prize winner, it goes without saying, fully deserves a street or a square - Deledda's great rival, Luigi Pirandello, has 14 to his name - who are the other 1625 female figures to whom this honor has been reserved?
Well, the answer is easy: they are saints, martyrs. Women who the circumstances of life have enveloped in an aura of mysticism and sacredness that has made them untouchable, distant. To venerate, like Mary, the Madonna. It appears more than a hundred times on the streets of the 21 cities considered by the study. In all the capitals, except Aosta, there are streets or squares dedicated to her - with 65 different names, from Madonna del Mare to Virgo Potens.
The women who have developed a profession, making their way in a world that has reasoned and still thinks in the male, are just 959. Paradoxically, if they had a street in their name, the women killed by men "who loved them too much", they too martyrs, the relationship would be sadly reversed.
But what happens at our home in Cagliari? Of 1542 streets and squares, 716 are named after people, and 660 are named after men. Despite this imbalance, there are those who do worse than us. If in Cagliari the names of women are just 7.8 per cent, in Turin 5, in Trieste 3.4, in Ancona 3.5, in Bologna 5, even worse Milan with 4.9, for non dire di Aosta, stops at 2.7: out of 73 streets dedicated to people, there are only two streets dedicated to female figures, the Red Cross nurse Ermelinda Ducler and the anti-fascist partisan Aurora Vuillerminaz. On the other hand, Bolzano leads the “female” ranking with 13.5, followed by Venice with 10.1 and Trento with 9.8. L'Aquila is also better than us with 9.3; Palermo with 8.1 the same percentage as Catanzaro.
On balance, 93 percent of streets named after people celebrate a man, first of all Giuseppe Garibaldi.
But besides the saints and the aforementioned Grazia Deledda, which women have been granted the honor of having a street or a square with their own name? For example to Maria Callas, a famous opera singer, present in 6 cities. Anna Magnani, great actress, cited 4 times; the writer Elsa Morante (5), Matilde Serao and Ada Negri (7) the sprinter Ondina Valla (4), just two for the Nobel Prize winner Rita Levi Montalcini compared to the 4 routes of the scientist Marie Curie. Two also for the journalist and writer Oriana Fallaci and the singer Maria Carta. And so on, scrolling through the very masculine list. As if to say, the road is really long and the names of many candidates.
