Berkley Center

On the morning of November 7, I was in a taxi on the way to the train station when I overheard on the radio, "The Democratic Party has won, but the Republican Party still controls the Senate." A quick search on my phone led me to more specific midterm election results in the races I was following, where I was greeted again and again by faces of women who were making history in their newly-elected positions. I was, and am, ecstatic. These women were diverse in their identities and their experiences, reflecting a more accurate, albeit not complete, representation of the American people. Yet, these women were absent from the conversation as it existed in Italy, encouraging me to look further into the gender divisions of Italian politics.

My experience of politics in Italy has more grounding in its ancient Roman history than its contemporary context, yet I was still shocked to see how few women participate or play leading roles in the electoral process and coverage. In the same period that brought about the #MeToo movement in the United States, the wave had failed to reach the male-dominated political sphere in Italy. Earlier this year in the elections, talk shows hosted all-male panels of experts. Field reporters and interviewers were predominantly male as well. Whenever modern Italian politics came up, it was always a male figure at the center of attention, dominating the discussion and offering an authoritative voice on the political system.

Women’s issues have always been important to me, and their time in the spotlight has arrived in the United State as a visceral response to the outcome of other recent elections and a change in our culture. Each year this manifests itself in the Women’s March, an event signaling to the country that women will not be silent in the face of injustice. Yet, protests take a different shape here in Italy. Two weeks there was a transportation strike in Rome. That same weekend there was a protest at the Piazza del Campidoglio denouncing the failure of the city administration to address issues of infrastructure and waste management.

While these protests reflect the different priorities of citizens and the urgency of such issues, I wonder if these issues must be mutually exclusive in their resolutions. Can we address the ways in which society negatively affects women while simultaneously seeking solutions to infrastructural issues? Should we? And if so, whose place is it to decide when and where and how such issues can be addressed?

In just over a month, I will return home to the United States. But I leave Italy knowing that I have more than one home. While I desperately seek to make the world better for those around me in the United States, I find solidarity with the women I have seen here that experience burdens both similar to my own and entirely unfamiliar. In whatever way I am able I will continue to support them, and hopefully in a few years, I will check the morning news to find the faces of Italian women making history.