Society told by numbers
Linda Laura Sabbadini, former director of Istat, explains how data are crucial for understanding reality and bring out otherwise invisible situations
Her personal story is worth more than a thousand campaigns to encourage girls to study Stem subjects: with numbers, data and statistical processes, in fact, Linda Laura Sabbadini has always been at ease thanks to a luminous mind, the teacher Emma Castelnuovo. It was in middle school, under her guidance, that Sabbadini approached mathematics as a game of intuition and creativity, defying the worst stereotypes. An approach that she has carried with her in the years to come.
When she joined ISTAT in 1983, she did so by means of a competition for secondary school leavers and, once graduated, she slowly climbed the mountain to the top. Her life and professional experience come together in the book Il Paese che conta (The Country that Counts): a powerful statement of the value of numbers, of the humanistic substance of statistics, of their ability to impact society by bringing to light ignored phenomena and giving visibility to what would otherwise remain buried in silence.
Lo testimonia l’esplorazione dei decenni presi in esame dall’autrice, che racconta l’evoluzione dell’Istat e i traguardi raggiunti, a cominciare dal peso finalmente attribuito alle donne, al lavoro femminile – incluso quello mai considerato tale, di cura, anche degli anziani –, alla violenza di genere sommersa dall’oscurità. Un buio spesso difensivo sotto il quale si celavano le vittime, umiliate e prostrate dalla vergogna, oltre che spaventate dall’idea di non essere credute. E non è un caso che Linda Laura Sabbadini sia riuscita a incrinare la barriera di paura e diffidenza di tante di loro attraverso le domande adeguate poste nei questionari, che rivelavano sensibilità e umanità. Ci è riuscita anche con l’esperienza maturata in sette anni di sondaggi nelle società demoscopiche, un’attività svolta da ragazza per raggranellare qualche soldo. Una tecnica, basata sull’assenza di ambiguità interpretativa, affinata con il tempo e con l’osservazione delle persone.
The training of those who conduct a statistical survey (but also judicial, journalistic, medical, etc.) must be cared for and updated in order to achieve effective results. As Sabbadini reiterates on several occasions, the latter cannot disregard the independence of the institution and the seriousness of those who work in it. Pressure from politicians or other actors to manipulate data and bend them to their own ideas and convenience is constant (just think of Donald Trump's sorties on employment surveys). Safeguarding the third party, defending the autonomy of the numbers, and securing the transparency of methods is the precondition for restoring reality and rendering a service to the country.
It is impossible to talk about a book of this kind without quoting a few numbers, and it is difficult to choose them in the story of a society that is changing its skin. In 1988, Italian was already the language of 87% of citizens, but 44.1% alternated it with dialect; two years later came the first survey on disability, and the result was shocking: one million 151,000 disabled people were still treated in a manner unworthy of a country that wants to call itself civilised. They live in a state of confinement, locked up at home between a sofa and a bed; women account for 735,000 of the total. The total number of people unable to perform at least one of their daily activities (eating, washing, dressing) is 3 million 300,000. Like a large city whose actual existence was previously unknown.
