Isabella Marchiolo
10 grandi donne dietro 10 grandi uomini

If I were asked to draft a list of ten things, people, or categories to save, a hypothetical useful luggage from today's world to carry with us into the future, I couldn't help but think of women. And it's not out of gender solidarity because I am also a woman. No, this would simply be a logical association: women generate life, and without them, at some point in humanity, there would be nothing left to save anyway. Basically, this means you can't wipe us out or decide to delete us from an ideal list of important things. Moreover, I have little faith in the possibilities of science to procreate outside of a female womb. Therefore, at least in the future we can imagine for now, we are still indispensable.

These are the opening lines of the latest book by Isabella Marchiolo, a writer and journalist from Calabria.

Whose stories do we read in the pages of "10 grandi donne dietro 10 grandi uomini"? I'll list them for you: Michelle Obama, Antonietta Vendola, Rita Borsellino, Hillary Clinton, Mina Welby, Harper Lee, Pilar Saramago, Anna De Grazia, Taherer Saeedi, Yoko Ono. Although some names don't quite convince me, like Hillary Clinton and Yoko Ono, it's the meaning that wants to be given to the "thing" that I like less: seeing women no longer behind men but next to them!

Is it possible that we can't be in front sometimes, as long as we deserve it? Linketto 1.

"Even Italy towards womeneconomics": the term is relatively new, literally meaning women's economy, and it was coined a few years ago by economist Kathy Matsui. We can even talk about a movement fighting for the enhancement of female employment.

The global data on female underemployment are disheartening, but they are even more so in Italy: we Italians know well how our male counterparts demote us or trip us up to make us fall.

So I asked myself: are there really only 10 women who can be talked about? Are there so few of us worthy of attention? I really don't think so, Linketto 2.

Women have proven they succeed even in fields considered masculine, yet the media continue to show us a conventional and unchangeable female work model: insensitive, unscrupulous, humanly lousy, Linketto 3.

Perhaps I should have reviewed "Why Men Are Jerks and Women Are Naggers", if I had bought it, but I was too pissed off about the nonsense and clichés regarding "rosa quotas": how is it possible that Italy is the most chauvinistic nation in Europe?

Okay, in the end, there is one man who understood us women, or at least noticed the male inferiority... better than nothing!  Linketto 4.