Date: 2023
Nationality: franco-italian
Description: Silvia, a thirty-year-old Franco-Italian intellectual, reflects on gender categorizations and the construction of stereotypes and on the social role imposed on women; a role on which rights and welfare policies are shaped. She speaks of self-determination, gender narratives, individual social responsibilities as well as those of the institutions and companies in the perpetuation of inequalities with men and among women themselves.
“The discovery of sexuality, at 16, 17, was something very special for me, because for the first time in my life I was categorized by the fact of being a woman.”
“The demand that weighs on women in France is more professional. That’s why women have children later and later … In France and Germany there is an institutional system that strongly supports motherhood and professional career of women who choose to be mothers”.
Silvia highlights the paradoxes of roles and the intersectionality of the disparities that derive from them among women themselves: women without children not only do not enjoy the rights of “temporary absence from work”, but they are considered women with a lot of time in their hands to be made available at the service of others, for the care of others.
“There is a category, a black spot for women who do not have children, who cannot claim additional social rights or compensation of any kind to get time off work, the one recognized for motherhood”.
“Paradoxically (women who have not had children) find themselves with all the gender norms associated with the feminine, that is, being the person who cares for others”. If you go to dinner with a couple with a small child, you are “the person who takes care of the food, who is careful about how the husband who quarreled with his wife is… that is, you do social and psychological assistance to everyone, because she cannot: she is breastfeeding or giving the bottle…”
“There is a social judgment, there is a very strong moral judgment. Is there really a feminist community of women today that defends the cause of all women?”