WOMEN AND RIGHTS
Women and rights
Among the many female characters deeply connected to Naples and its legends, we encounter goddesses, mermaids, magicians, scholars, artists, and activists who conveyed messages of emancipation, fought for their rights, and sought to obtain a social and cultural identity, becoming role models who left examples of courage, political commitment, great creativity, a desire for knowledge, strong resilience, and an indomitable revolutionary spirit to subsequent generations. They were the protagonists of a struggle for rights, freedom and justice. Some of them challenged conventions, fought against oppression and wrote their names in history with courage, determination and love for their city. Let us therefore explore some female incarnations, crossing their stories with those of women who represent those same ideals today.
The fight for freedom
Eleonora Pimentel Fonseca was an intelligent and refined woman, a poet and multilingual journalist. These were truly exceptional qualities for a girl of her time, especially when one considers the difficulties she had to face during her life: an arranged marriage and a violent husband, the courage to ask for a separation and face the trial. Eleonora was a true and concrete champion of republican ideals, which still seem to linger in the Spanish Quarter where she lived and where she may even have organised secret political meetings. She even became librarian to Queen Maria Carolina of Habsburg-Lorraine, until her constant political commitment to the advancement of the less fortunate classes earned her the appointment by the provisional government as director of the city's first political newspaper, Il Monitore Napoletano. Eleonora tried to overthrow the Bourbon regime and establish a democratic republic in Naples during the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799, in which she not only actively participated but was also one of the intellectual protagonists of the revolution. Her struggle for freedom ended tragically with her execution: she was executed by the Bourbons, but her last words, “Perhaps one day it will be useful to remember all this”, still resonate today as a warning to future generations. She remains a symbol of courage and passion, embodying the struggle for civil rights and human dignity in an era of great political turmoil. Eleonora Pimentel Fonseca is remembered today not only as a martyr for freedom, but also as a woman who was able to combine culture and social commitment, paving the way for a new idea of committed and conscious femininity in the Neapolitan and Italian landscape.
Elena de Filippo
Elena de Filippo (Naples, 15 September 1963) is a sociologist, researcher and trainer with extensive experience in the fields of immigration, social policy and the third sector. Since 1999, she has been chair of the board of directors of the Dedalus Social Cooperative in Naples, one of the most active organisations in Italy providing services to foreign nationals, women in difficulty, adolescents and families at risk of social exclusion. Within the cooperative, she coordinates complex local intervention projects, carries out research and is responsible for training public and third sector operators. After graduating with honours in Sociology from the University of Naples Federico II (1989), she obtained a PhD in “Sociology of Innovation Processes in Southern Italy” with a thesis on the labour market and migration policies in Mediterranean Europe. She furthered her studies at the Universidade Aberta in Lisbon and attended international schools of social research methodology, including the University of Essex in England. Elena de Filippo is an adjunct professor of Sociology of Migration at the University of Naples Federico II, where she has been teaching since 2002. She is also a member of the scientific committee of the Master's degree programme in Migration Management and Reception and Inclusion Processes. She has taught courses and seminars for numerous undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, collaborating with academic, health, educational and administrative institutions. She was a member of the National Observatory for the Integration of Foreign Students and Interculturalism established at the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR) and a consultant to the Municipality of Naples on migration issues. Her research and consultancy work has developed over more than thirty years, with a constant focus on issues such as immigrant integration, labour exploitation, human trafficking, second generations, gender-based violence, interculturalism and youth distress. She has collaborated with research bodies, universities, NGOs and public institutions such as the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of the Interior, the Campania Region, Istat, Federico II University, IOM, CNR, the ISMU Foundation and many others. She has published over 50 articles in scientific journals and volumes.
Women's rights
Luciana Viviani
Lucia Viviani (1890-1945) was an indomitable anti-fascist and feminist warrior who fought on the front lines of the most important Italian battles of the 20th century. From the Resistance to the struggles for women's emancipation, she pursued her political and civil commitment with tireless passion. She was a simple woman, but she made political commitment and the fight for women's rights her reason for living, fighting all kinds of battles and campaigns for freedom of motherhood, divorce, abortion and nurseries. Viviani used her pen as a weapon, denouncing injustice and giving a voice to those who were often marginalised by society. She was born in Naples in 1917, the third child of actor and playwright Raffaele Viviani and Maria Di Majo. From her father, she inherited a love of art, culture and the ability to observe the world, collect people's stories and act as their spokesperson. As she herself wrote, “For twenty years, I lived in a small-town middle-class environment, even though my father was a man of the people who expressed in his art the most ruthless denunciation of the tragic conditions of poverty of the Neapolitan populace”. She graduated in foreign languages and literature and was already involved in anti-fascist activism during her university years. From 1945, Luciana Viviani was involved in the Italian Communist Party (PCI) for the democratic reconstruction of the country: she participated in the establishment of the party's women's commissions in Milan and devoted herself enthusiastically to the struggle for the immediate interests and rights of the most disadvantaged, particularly Neapolitan women and children. In 1946, she was elected to Parliament, where she remained for four terms. As a leader and active member of the Italian Women's Union (UDI), she experienced all the transformations and struggles of the association, from its foundation to its transformation into a movement enshrined in the Charter of Intent. She left an indelible mark on the history of the UDI and the relationship between emancipation and liberation in the book she wrote in 1985 together with Maria Michetti and Margherita Repetto, “UDI. Laboratorio di politica delle donne” (UDI. Women's Politics Workshop), which remains an essential text for the history of the Italian women's movement. Published by Giunti, her books include 'Rosso antico. Come lottare per il comunismo senza perdere l'umorismo (1994) and Le viceregine di Napoli (1997), in which she intertwined autobiography and history with formidable irony. She died on 11 June 2012 at the age of 95. Her commitment during the Resistance earned her a war merit cross.
Lella Palladino
Sociologist, feminist, activist in anti-violence centres, expert in gender issues, she has always been involved in planning and managing interventions for the prevention and combating of male violence and for the promotion of women's subjectivity and rights, constantly combining professional activity and political commitment. Shortly after graduating with a thesis in Cultural Anthropology, she founded the Co.St.Ante cooperative with colleagues from Professor Amalia Signorelli's working group, focusing on anthropological studies in the field. She worked for five years on a scholarship in the Maternal and Child Health Service of the Local Health Authority of Caserta, overseeing health education projects for women's reproductive health and monitoring family counselling centres. For eight years, she was a member of the Technical Operations Unit of the Campania Region, Social Policies area, as a Formez consultant for training support and technical assistance to local areas for the implementation of 328/00 and for supporting regional offices in the preliminary investigation of Area Plans and the production of guidelines. In 1999, she founded the E.V.A. Social Cooperative, an organisation of women active in gender policies, which today manages five anti-violence centres in Campania, three shelters for the protection of women who have survived violence, victims of trafficking, refugees and asylum seekers, two workshops, “Le Ghiottonerie di Casa Lorena” and “EvaLab”, for the employment and economic independence of women leaving situations of violence and in particularly difficult circumstances, set up in two properties confiscated from organised crime and repurposed for social purposes. With the same aims, EVA also manages the refreshment bar at the Mercadante Theatre in Naples.
When art promotes rights
Benedetto Croce said of her, “Serao is all observation, driven by emotion”. She was the first ‘real’ Italian journalist, born in Patras in 1856 to a Neapolitan father exiled in Greece and a Greek mother. From 1860 onwards, she lived in Naples, where she attended the Scuola Normale and worked for several years at the State Telephone Company, before devoting herself to literature and journalism. Before her, other women had devoted themselves to journalism, but they remained mere contributors, mostly to women's magazines. Serao, on the other hand, soon joined the editorial staff of a daily newspaper, Capitan Fracassa, which was a novelty in the daily press. After her marriage to Eduardo Scarfoglio in 1885, she founded the Corriere di Roma with him, where she directed the entire editorial staff. In 1888, she returned to Naples, where she and her husband first founded and directed the Corriere di Napoli and then, in 1892, Il Mattino, which would become the most widely read daily newspaper in southern Italy. After separating from her husband, she founded the daily newspaper Il Giorno on her own and edited the weekly literary magazine La Settimana. Alongside her journalistic work, which she carried out with passion and daily commitment, she devoted herself to literature and was a prolific writer of various genres. Her fame is linked to the novel Il ventre di Napoli (The Belly of Naples), which she published in instalments in Capitan Fracassa in 1884, where she denounced the government's responsibility for the cholera epidemic that struck Naples, while in the book Il paese di Cuccagna (The Land of Plenty) she wrote about the lottery and, more generally, the misery of Naples. Matilde Serao had a great ability to portray the truest and most painful image of the Neapolitan population at that particular moment in history, from the 1870s to the early 20th century. She died in 1927 in Naples, the city whose transformation and decline she had observed and described with such insight. As a journalist and writer, she was able to observe with lucidity and express with painful sadness the sacrifice of the South, consumed in the name of national unity and the careerism of Rome, the capital, and the consequent sense of inevitable fatality that would envelop the entire South from then on.ione.
Marina Rippa
Marina Rippa Born in Naples, where she lives, in 1961. She began to take an interest in movement as a form of expression in 1979, attending ISEF in Naples and simultaneously training in psychokinetics with Jean Le Boulch. From 1982 to 1988, she was part of the national research and experimentation team on functional motor education in nursery and primary schools as an operator. She approached theatre as a mime artist and actress, but always favoured work on movement and “behind the scenes” work as a trainer. In 1992, she founded the theatre research group “Libera Mente” with Davide Iodice, Raffaele Di Florio and Massimo Staich. She deals with non-verbal languages, body dramaturgy, actor training and theatre pedagogy. She has supervised training and movement studies for various shows produced by Libera Mente, the Venice Biennale, the Berlin Festival, the Mercadante Theatre, the Napoli Teatro Festival Italia, the Spoleto Festival, the Strega company in Benevento and Ateater in Val Badia. Since 1994, she has been exploring the female universe, devising and conducting theatre projects with women of all ages.
When art promotes rights
Artemisia Gentileschi was born in Rome in 1593, during a period of great artistic ferment. The daughter of painter Orazio Gentileschi, she was one of the first women to pursue an artistic career in a male-dominated world, demonstrating extraordinary talent from a very young age. Her life was marked by a traumatic event: the violence she suffered at the hands of her teacher Agostino Tassi, which led to a public trial in 1612, during which Artemisia courageously testified. After moving to Florence, she was the first woman to be admitted to the Accademia del Disegno and received important commissions thanks to the protection of the Medici family. She travelled between Rome, Venice, London and Naples, where she established herself as one of the most important painters of her time. Her works, such as “Judith Beheading Holofernes”, are known for their dramatic force and their active and courageous representation of women, often inspired by her own life experience. Artemisia died in Naples around 1654, leaving behind a fundamental artistic and symbolic legacy: she was one of the first artists to give voice and strength to the female perspective in painting.
Trisha Palma
Trisha Palma was born in Naples on 18 January 1995. She showed an interest in painting from a very young age; at six years old, her mother gave her an easel and from that moment on she never put down her brushes, using canvases and colours to communicate the expressive urgency of her melancholic temperament. She began her training at the SS Apostoli Art School in Naples and continued her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in theatre set design. Since her academic years, she has pursued careers as both a painter and a set designer. She has participated in various exhibitions, including those at the PAN with Napoli Art Expo and at the Madre.
Gender medicine
Trotula de Ruggero
Trotula De Ruggiero is considered the first scientist to introduce “gender medicine” into the medical field. She was the most famous of the “Mulieres Salernitanae”, the Ladies of the Medical School of Salerno, where the scientist studied and taught. Her theories were ahead of their time in many fields, including prevention and hygiene, and she was the author of medical treatises that demonstrate exceptional knowledge in the fields of dermatology, gynaecology and obstetrics. She is part of a long tradition – spanning antiquity and the Middle Ages – of women active in the medical professions. Her exceptional nature is due to the fact that she wrote down her teachings, placing them on a level of knowledge that could be passed on. She was the author of many medical works, the most important of which is De Passionibus Mulierum Curandarum (on women's diseases), also known as Trotula Maggiore. Another important work written by Trotula was De Ornatu Mulierum (on women's cosmetics), also known as Trotula Minor, in which she teaches women how to preserve and improve their beauty and treat skin diseases through a series of precepts, advice and natural remedies. Her main interest was to alleviate women's suffering and preserve their physical well-being. This was a recurring theme in her texts: according to Trotula, women's beauty is linked to the philosophy of nature, which inspired her medical science: beauty is the sign of a healthy body in harmony with the universe. Her treatise De Passionibus Mulierium Curandarum was published in 1100 and remained an important text until it underwent its first significant revision in the early 1600s. Trotula was married to a physician named John Platearius. They had two sons, Matthew and John, who also became respected physicians. During her lifetime, Trotula was given the title Magistra Mulier Sapiens (The Wise Woman Teacher). Her reputation was very high in the Middle Ages, as her name was also mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (1388-1400). In the first half of the 19th century, a precious bronze medal was even minted in her honour.nore.
Rosetta Papa
Rosetta Papa, gynaecologist, was born and lives in Naples. She worked for 40 years in public healthcare and in 1981 opened one of the first family planning clinics in the northern suburbs of the city, an area at high social and health risk. She held prestigious positions within the ASL Napoli1 local health authority, where, as director of the Women's Health Unit, she was responsible for cancer screening programmes, the process for the application of Law 194, and was a member of the Campania Region Birth Process Committee and the Technical Scientific Committee of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (National Institute of Health) as part of the Project for the Redevelopment and Enhancement of Family Planning Clinics. A staunch supporter of the importance of informing women about their reproductive health rights, which are too often denied, she has written two informative essays, the first together with neonatologist Roberta Arsieri, on the excessive use of inappropriate caesarean sections in Campania, entitled Stringo i denti e diranno che rido (I grit my teeth and they say I'm laughing). Ovvero l'accidentato percorso nascita in Campania- Guida Ed 2005 (I'll grit my teeth and they'll say I'm laughing: The bumpy road to childbirth in Campania - Guida Ed 2005), and the second on the critical issues in the South relating to the protection of reproductive and sexual health, entitled La Ragazza con il piercing al naso: Women South of Health - Albatros Ed 2013. Finally, in 2023, Guida published his essay Disuguali (Unequal), on health inequalities between the north and south of Italy. She currently teaches on the Level I and II Master's Degree course in “Management and Coordination of Health and Social-Health Services” at the Department of Social Sciences, Federico II University, Naples. She is a columnist for Corriere del Mezzogiorno.
Women's empowerment today, an example: La Buvette di Eva
‘It's a challenge to say no to violence’ is the slogan of the EVA social cooperative, which for years has been investing in the guidance and employment of women escaping violence. Founded in 1999 in the province of Caserta with the specific mission of preventing and combating male violence against women by managing anti-violence centres and shelters, over the years it has expanded its field of action and cultural transformation with the creation of real ‘small businesses’ that embody a series of characteristics and guiding values that are the result of more than twenty years of work dedicated to cultural change, the removal of gender inequalities and the promotion of an inclusive, circular and sustainable social economy. The first is Le Ghiottonerie di Casa Lorena: founded in 2012 in a property confiscated from organised crime in Casal di Principe, it is a workshop that produces catering, jams and baked goods. The second, EvaLab, is an ethical fashion tailoring workshop founded in 2020 in another property confiscated from organised crime. The latest addition is La buvette di Eva in the two venues of the National Theatre of Naples: in 2022, the first café was opened in the foyer of the Mercadante Theatre, and in 2023, another was opened in the San Ferdinando Theatre. All these activities support the most vulnerable women through the dignity and autonomy that only a concrete and stable job can give, promote legality by enhancing confiscated properties, making them symbolically and concretely generative of beauty and opportunity, and stimulate local development opportunities with a specific focus on environmental sustainability and the people involved. Social and environmental justice are, in fact, the two macro-categories through which we can interpret the entire range of activities carried out by EVA, which currently employs 45 women in anti-violence centres, shelters, job placement activities, coordination and management.
The legitimate question that many people have asked us over the years has been, 'Where did the idea come from to enter the market through job placement workshops whose primary objective is to provide employment and training to women leaving violent situations, in a way that is certainly different, alternative and respectful of people, but still positioned on the market, pursuing sustainability that is not only environmental but also financial? The answer is simple: the idea arose from necessity.
The women we have met over the course of more than twenty years in the anti-violence centres and shelters of the EVA Cooperative come from a wide variety of economic and social backgrounds, precisely because violence is a cross-cutting phenomenon. However, it is undeniable that, working in a region such as Campania, where the female employment rate is 34.6% (ISTAT data), a large proportion of the women we have supported through the anti-violence centres, in addition to having suffered violence in the family context, have not completed their compulsory education, do not have a driving licence, have not had decent work experience and do not have a personal bank account. Furthermore, the abusive relationship tends to absorb all their energy, undermining their lucidity and self-esteem and preventing them from cultivating interests and opportunities for personal and professional growth. Borrowing from the studies of Martha Nussbaum and Arjun Appadurai, which describe how the most disadvantaged individuals suffer from limited aspirations because they cannot imagine a different future and do not recognise their own internal resources to achieve it, women who find themselves facing violence impose limits on their own expectations and accept unfavourable situations that confirm or increase their level of deprivation and poverty, focusing their scarce energy on their own survival.ravvivenza.
Therefore, in anti-violence centres and shelters, a major commitment of the operators remains that of helping women to believe in themselves and to dream again of change, improvement and a more satisfying future for themselves. The work of staff at anti-violence centres is not simply to welcome women who have suffered violence, but to enhance their internal resources through structured empowerment programmes. All the women employed in the work integration workshops have completed a programme with staff at an anti-violence centre, reworking their own stories and reweaving the threads of their lives into a new fabric. At work, they had the opportunity to try their hand at tasks that were initially basic and simple and gradually became more complex, with a welcoming, non-judgmental and empathetic approach on the part of the operators, who were always present and “listening” to the working group. In a complex and almost never linear process, the women managed to integrate, improve their skills, and sometimes learn punctuality, respect for tasks, and diligence. Even those women who continued their working lives elsewhere had the opportunity to experiment positively at work and to treasure the experience they had gained in order to present themselves in other contexts with clear and marketable skills and new self-confidence.
Important for all of them was the reflection of their own stories in the stories of others, where similarities are riches that intertwine in choral dances as in a Matisse painting, multiplying recognition and deep bonds to the point of feeling that the story of one is the story of all. The opportunity to enhance each woman's forgotten or unrecognised inner resources, together with the reinforcement of personal skills, is the starting point for reclaiming one's life. This journey determines women's freedom to pursue, each in her own way, the life she desires, expressing and realising her own subjectivity, in a dynamic of self-realisation and transformation where the focus is on the individual woman with her subjectivity and her history, in a perspective that also contemplates the right to hope and happiness. Embarking on this journey of rebirth in a context full of culture and beauty has a very high symbolic value.
The two EVA refreshment bars, the first established in 2022 at the Mercadante Theatre and the second in 2023 at the San Ferdinando Theatre, offer the opportunity to show a vast audience that it is possible to escape violence. This is recounted by the protagonists themselves, who, from their magnificent stage, an elegant black and gold counter, with a smile and the desire to do their job well, talk generously about themselves, recount how they rewrote their own stories through the support of an anti-violence centre and subsequently through full economic autonomy. They expose themselves without reticence and with courage, overturning a widespread, mistaken and stereotypical narrative that still unfairly nails them to the figure of victims. The creation of the two buvette, which have become places steeped in transformative and cultural politics, was made possible by intense networking and important alliances between different worlds: the first buvette, at the Teatro Mercadante, came into being thanks to a donation from “Una nessuna centomila”, the mega-concert featuring some of Italy's greatest artists (Laura Pausini, Elisa, Giorgia, Emma, Alessandra Amoroso, Gianna Nannini) led by Fiorella Mannoia, which was held on 11 June 2022 at the RCF Arena in Reggio Emilia.
The opening of EVA's refreshment bar in the San Ferdinando Theatre was funded by Fondazione Con il Sud through a more complex project, also in support of women, called 'R.O.S.E Reti per l'occupazione, health and empowerment', which involves a broad partnership and various other activities, including the theatre workshop “A Tavola” led by Marina Rippa of the Femminile Plurale association, a “scenic preview” of which was offered on 25 June in the foyer of the Teatro San Ferdinando. Intensive networking is also at the heart of EvaLab, the ethical fashion workshop set up in a confiscated property, which enjoys the support of Prof. Maddalena Marciano, professor of fashion design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, Giusy Giustino, former director of the Teatro San Carlo's tailoring department, Maison Gucci, which donated rolls of precious silk to the workshop, and Dr Maffei, director of the Royal Palace of Caserta.trice della Reggia di Caserta.
