Ida, Matilde and the others: the path of the pioneers

As in politics, work, writing, and any public space, women have struggled to make their way and establish themselves in journalism. And if it is true that only a few still reach the top positions, and conquer them after years of hard work and sacrifices, it is also true that some situations and goals are taken for granted. This is why Valeria Palumbo's essay, The Voice of Women, is meritorious. It recalls, with remarkable documentation - and without stopping at national borders - the lives and experiences of the first, the pioneers, who imposed themselves, opening a path for those who came after. A reconnaissance that starts from the second half of the 19th century and stops at recent years (with Oriana Fallaci and a few others), only lapped up, actually, because the intention is to recount the seasons that "have shaped us and still influence the narrative and the most widespread ideas", those penalising those who considered women's autonomy and freedom a threat. Already in 1884, there were avant-garde figures, aware of the importance of creating a school (and making a team) if it is true that Ida Baccini, who became the director of the magazine 'Cornelia' - and even though she had to cope with the prescriptions of a society that saw women confined to the home and devoted to the family - taught the youngest women the trade and made them grow up. Taking it for granted that they work, of course.

If the review opens with the mother of them all, Matilde Serao, founder of the 'Mattino' (no woman had ever achieved her feats, writes Palumbo, and 'none has succeeded since'), the others are no less impressive. Women writers lent to journalism (from Anna Maria Ortese to Alba de Céspedes via Sibilla Aleramo), war reporters such as Flavia Steno, who followed the First World War and went through the Second (in 1943 the fascist regime sentenced her to fifteen years in prison for her critique of five textbooks), the forerunners of women's magazines, without forgetting the commitment of political journalists, Anna Kuliscioff and Maria Giudice in the lead, for whom writing was at the service of the ideals of democracy and the education of women readers. From beyond the Alps, then, come the essential points of reference, the unreachable models such as that of Nellie Bly (the American who travelled around the world... other than women who were queens of the hearth), while photojournalism speaks with the militant and restless gaze of Tina Modotti.

Certainly, amidst contradictions and differences - of environment, preparation, economic and social condition - there was one element that unified them all: the awareness of the importance of study as a precondition for a real attempt at emancipation. In the Italy that had before it the goal of overcoming illiteracy, their contribution was crucial.

Valeria Palumbo

The voice of women