I want to repeat in this space also published an article on my blog "Culture and Culture " and posted on other channels.
How many people know the sad story of Italy Donati? Few, I imagine very few. Donati, the daughter of farmers, he decided to take a different route, a steep path, which caused many problems, so as to induce her to suicide. In 1883 Italy was named primary school teacher in a town of Pistoia, but the mayor, Raffaele Torrigiani, forced her to live next to his house. The mayor of sexual harassment, slander people, hostility other women and especially the news of his hypothetical abortion, then considered a serious crime, did the girl fall into despair, as to induce her to suicide. Italian left instructions that his body was inspected in order to ascertain his virginity. A tragic story, which spread in the newspapers, arousing deep emotion, considering that 20 thousand people attended the funeral. "The print campaign made about other similar cases, and yet it was only in 1911 that came all'avocazione elementary school, the first responsibility of local, state, and the establishment of an educational process for teachers." Meanwhile, while "the teachers were fighting for a culture more decent work and a less precarious, very few women were able to access a new profession, the teacher of high school. " In fact, the bourgeois culture tended to remove the problem of emancipation with seemingly scientific issues: the lower brain weight, regular physical ailments, pregnancy and the tasks related to the care and feeding of children. In fact, his wife devoted to housework was very convenient to the masculine world and, therefore, were shortcuts to prevent women from leaving home. Donati was part of the story in a context where - as noted by Elena Gianini Belotti, author of "Before the peace. History Donati of Italy "- the teacher and the use of items were then the only non-manual jobs open to the" fairer sex ". The unity of Italy was recently high illiteracy. In this bleak picture of the various governments of the time they set up rural schools in every village, however, spared the municipalities already limited funds available. The teachers were poorly paid, ill, confined to classrooms indecent, private teaching materials, even chalk and ink, isolated from the people suspicious and hostile to education because they evaded the children work in the fields.
'Up In Italy from 1887 women graduates were non-existent until 1893 and represented a real exception. " And of course excelled universities in the North, with Naples only city in the South The study, for some girls, it was the price of freedom. In contemporary society, however, education seems an option, often an obligation, not a pleasure. Knowing, not just for women but for all humanity, should be a desire, dictated by the desire to understand the world through history, geography, literature, mathematics, physics, astronomy and biology . Women should make available to the company their resources, without hesitation and knocking down the prejudices of those who are still rooted to a preset scheme - which unfortunately does not take into account the specificities of each - but above all should never forget the many female figures who fought for the right to education.
Source A. Bravo, M. Pelaja, A Pescarolo, L. Scaraffia, social history of women in contemporary Italy, p.51, Editors, The Third, 2001
