FESTA DELLA DONNA 2025

 

"Mimosa cake" from the Cicara Caffetteria, Modica. The mimosa is a symbol of IWD in Italy.

I am writing this very late, so I hope everyone is having or has had a very happy International Women's Day.

Here in Italy it was announced yesterday that the Italian government has approved a draft law which will make femicide a crime in itself, instead of being a sub-category of homicide and the sentence will be life imprisonment. The law (which still has to go through Parliament) will also contain sentences for crimes such as stalking, sexual violence and revenge pornography.

This is welcome and it reminded me of something that happened long ago:

"Cathy was married to Jim."

Every year, on this day, I think of  pretty Cathy, "Cathy" being the name that I gave her in my memoir. She was the mother of my last, and most serious, boyfriend in Bristol before my family moved to London. Cathy was one of the nicest and prettiest women I have ever met, yet her husband Jim beat her - every single day. Joey would often arrive home to find his bruised and bloodied mother lying unconscious in the grate.

Everybody in our Bristol neighbourhood knew about it and they were also well aware that Jim kept a mistress. Whether he abused this woman too I have no idea, nor did I know who she was, though she was probably someone I saw most days either in shops or in the street.

My dad, along with other men who lived nearby, couldn't understand why Joey, tall, strong and eighteen years old at the time, didn't just "sort his father out" physically but I knew that the answer was that, if he had, Joey would have arrived home to find his mother not unconscious in the grate, but dead.

Cathy tried to leave several times but no one was going to give a woman who had left her husband and had three other children much younger than Joey a job or let her rent a flat and the police largely ignored domestic violence.

At the time, newspapers even ran cartoons in which such violence was depicted as funny and it would take until 1971, when a woman called Erin Pizzey set up the first Women's Refuge in Chiswick, London, for the problem to be recognised. Other refuges sprang up all over the country and the women could go to them with their children to be safe from the men who had promised to love them but were now threatening their lives. The Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act of 1976 was the first piece of legislation to begin to deal with the problem and other legislation followed. Coercive control did not become a crime in England and Wales until 2015.

After we left Bristol and my relationship with Joey had ended, I heard that Cathy and Jim had been reconciled and that Jim was ignoring his mistress when he saw her in the street. I do not think that this state of affairs lasted, as in 2020, quite by chance, I came across a death notice for Cathy. The part about family said only, "Cathy was married to Jim." There was no adjectival phrase, such as "much-loved Jim" or "her devoted Jim" - just "Jim".

But you, pretty Cathy, will never be "just Cathy" to the now elderly woman who was nearly your daughter-in-law and I cried when I saw your photo that day, over half a century after the time when I knew you. I cried for you and all the women like you, all over the world, even today.

No woman should be afraid outside her home.

No woman should be afraid to go home.

No woman should be afraid in her home.

 

BUONA FESTA DELLA DONNA

It's International Women's Day and in Italy that means there is mimosa blossom - or creative representations of mimosa blossom - everywhere. As I've written before, the person who inspired this tradition was Teresa Mattei, one of the "Mothers of the Constitution" and very glad I am of it, because on this day all the bars and pastry shops have mimosa-inspired cakes while shops and businesses offer discounts to women and even give us little bouquets of mimosa. This morning I didn't have to pay for a coffee in my local bar because the owner of a nearby business had paid for all the women's coffees for the whole morning!

On a more serious note, here is a poem I have written for this day:

International Women's Day 2024

A Poem for Every Woman

This poem is for every woman.
It's for every woman who has had an idea ignored
and listened to the applause when a man suggested the same thing.

It's for every woman who's been told she's too plain or too pretty,

too fat, too thin, too stupid or too clever.

It's for every woman who's walked home 

alone and scared in the dark
with her keys in her hand and her phone at the ready
and quickened her pace as the steps speeded behind her.

It's for every woman who's been cat-called,

derided, belittled, harassed

and gone home weeping

and whose story has not been heard.

It's for Sarah and it's for Giulia

and it's for Tina. It's for the woman

who was nearly my mother-in-law,

whose husband hit her every day

and left her lying in the grate.

It's for Jo and the women MPs

afraid for their safety, less for their beliefs

than because it's women who dare to hold them -

in the United Kingdom, of all countries.

It's for the women who raise awareness,

it's for the writers – for Maya, for Dacia,

for Gloria, Simone and Toni

and so many others.

It's for the 1950s and 60s women

forced to give away their illegitimate children

and never see them again -

- children like me.

It's for the 2020s women,

hostages, soldiers, medics, dissidents,

wives, mothers, facing war, starvation, enduring loss,

in scenarios we believed expunged from our era.

It's for you, Yulia Navalnya.

It's for the women who have

no access to education and read in secret

and the women who fight 

for them. So it's for you, Malala.

It's for every woman whose needs are dismissed

because she's single or childless or old

or different in some way

and does not know where to sit

at the laden festive table.

It's for Janey and the women who make us laugh,

it's for the women who hold us up,

the women who love with us and the women who cry with us.

It's for all the women who fear

and all the women who dare

and the women who fear because they dare.

This poem is for every woman.

Notes

Sarah Everard – kidnapped and killed, aged 33, as she was walking home in London on 3^rd March 2021.

Giulia Cecchettin - brutally killed, aged 22, by her ex-boyfriend in Italy on 11^th November 2023.

Tina Turner (1939-2023) – singer and songwriter who was abused by her first husband.

MPs – Members of Parliament.

Helen Joanne “Jo” Cox - British Member of Parliament who was shot and stabbed to death in Birstall, Yorkshire, UK, by a man with far-right views on 16^th June 2016.

Maya Angelou (1928 – 2014) – American writer and civil rights activist.

Dacia Maraini (b. 1936) – Italian writer focussing on women's issues.

Gloria Steinem (b. 1934) – American journalist and a leader of US second-wave feminism.

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) – French feminist existentialist writer and political activist.

Toni Morrison (1931-2019) – American writer and Nobel Laureate focussing on the Black female experience in the US.

Yulia Borisnovna Navalnya (b. 1976) – economist and widow of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny (d. 2024). She has vowed to continue her husband's work and on 28^th February 2024, speaking in English, she addressed the European Parliament.

Malala Yousafzai (b. 1997) – Pakistani activist focussing on the rights of girls and women to education. She was shot and very seriously injured in 2012 while on her way home from school. She is the youngest Nobel Laureate.

Janey Godley (b. 1961) – Scottish comedian and writer.

© Pat M. Eggleton 2024

Happy International Women's Day!  Buona Festa della Donna!

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 2022

March 8th, La festa della donna, is widely celebrated in Italy and you see mimosa blossom everywhere. Here's why it is a symbol of this day. Arrangements such as those in the photo above are sold in supermarkets and in the streets (the one on the left containing artificial mimosa, of course but it's a pretty idea) and I bought the one below this morning:

Also this morning in my favourite bar all breakfasts and coffee consumed by women were paid for by a local business and we were each given little gifts of flowers - something to brighten our day after two years in which we haven't really been able to celebrate this day.

The dark times, as we know, continue and my thoughts today are with all the women who cannot celebrate International Women's Day in their own homes or even in their own country and who, unlike me, have had no choice in the matter. I'm sure you will join me in wishing them peace.

MIMOSA DAY

In Italy International Women's Day is widely celebrated and its symbol is the mimosa flower, because it is plentiful at this time of year. Mimosa bouquets are sold in the street, sprigs appear with your coffee in bars and pasticcerie make mimosa-themed cakes like these:

Almost exactly five years after the loss of the woman whose idea the mimosa symbol was, I thought I should repost what I wrote on the day of her death, 12th March 2013. Teresa Mattei has always been, and remains, one of my heroines:

Born in Genova in 1921, Teresa Mattei graduated in Philosophy from the University of Florence and became an antifascist campaigner. During the Second World War she was known as Partigiana Chicchi.  In 1946 she became the youngest woman member of the Assemblea Costituente, the parliamentary chamber charged with drawing up Italy's Constitution, a document which she defended throughout her life.

It was Teresa Mattei who had the idea of making the mimosa blossom the symbol of International Women's Day [8th March] for the simple reason that the flowers are in season in early March and can be obtained at little or no cost. 

Of the potential of women in politics she said,

"Women, in contrast to men, seek knowledge, cooperation and solidarity. They are the bearers of new life. They do not see society as being divided into classes but as a multitude of men and women with the same problems. Women can bring this new spirit into politics, but we have to create the structures that can allow this to happen."

Referring to the Second Prodi Government and its six women ministers, of whom only two had portfolios, she went on to say,

"These poor women can have no influence, because a minister without portfolio is unable to do what a minister with portfolio can, that is, to use a budget to put a plan into action. This is a very serious situation."

I think that first sentence is a metaphor for women's powerlessness all over the world.

Teresa Mattei died in Lari [Province of Pisa] today (12.3.13) at the age of 92.  I'm glad she saw this 8th March and, as she is laid to rest, the mimosa blooms for her all over Italy.

You are not forgotten, Teresita!