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Nuova DWF. Donna Woman Femme
Quaderni di studi internazionali sulla donna
Roma, Coines Edizioni, then Editrice coop. UTOPIA, 1976-1985
Woman and Cultural Transmission, 1977, n. 2
EDITORIAL, pp. 3-4
Debate [School in the Hands of Women - Women in the Grip of School?], pp. 5-19
ULIVIERI Simonetta
Italian Women in Education - From Unification to the present
day: laws, prejudices, struggles and perspectives, (Part 1), pp. 20-47
GAY Rita
The feminine stereotype in student and professional training,
pp. 48-56
MORGAN Patricia
Mother Nature - Feral Man?, pp. 57-70
FALTERI Paola
Women and the Mass Media, pp. 71-79
MORREALE Maria Teresa
Notes on Women's Education in the two Germanies, pp. 80-87
PORTELLI Alessandro
Malcom X's Anti-Feminism, pp. 88-100
FONTANA ROSE Eleonora
The juridical social and political Situation of women in
the Scandinavian Countries, pp. 101-126
Women are the main agents of the transmission (and therefore of the reproduction) of cultural models; but this is not a natural process - rather, it is a political choice. It must therefore be addressed politically, redefining women's role in our society, and carrying on a critical re-vision of the very culture we help to reproduce as mothers and teachers.
Debate [School in the Hands of Women - Women in the Grip of School?],
pp. 5-19
Debate - under the auspices of "nuova dwf" - with a group of university women in Bari. In this debate on the position and problems of women in the teaching professions the following themes were discussed: a. The difficulties and conflicts facing women instructors and teachers who refuse to regard their work as an extension of the maternal role; b. Part-time work - which though it alleviates some of the difficulties inherent in inadequate social services, also inhibits a truly professional approach or an complete and satisfying involvement; c. The problem in transmitting a culture which women have had no part in forming; d. The reasons why, though the education system is largely in the hands of women, the culture they transmit has scarcely changed; e. Women's difficulties in struggle inside the institutions; f. The effects on the new generation of teachers of the 1968 wave of university agitations and of feminism; g. An economic and sociological analysis of the massive influx of women into the teaching professions; h. A kindergarten teacher's description of her new work methods in an experimental school.
ULIVIERI Simonetta, Italian Women in Education - From Unification to the
present day: laws, prejudices, struggles and perspectives, (Part 1), pp.
20-47
At the time of Italian Unification ideas on education for women differed little from those of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Casati's law of 1859 did create, at least on paper, compulsory education, but it also sanctioned the division and differentiation of education according to sex. The "moral considerations" which served to justify the deliberate limits set to the education of girls, did not in any way limit, however, the exploitation of minors, boys and girls alike, in the labour force, and this exploitation is amply documented.
Anna Maria Mozzoni, one of the founders of Italian bourgeois feminism, demanded co-education, and women's right of access to all institutions of education. Schoolmistresses - the only career open to women - were no less discriminated against. They suffered moral subjugation and were paid less than men. At the beginning of the twentieth century, with the strengthening of the socialist party, there was wider discussion on women in education, and the women teacher's struggle for equal pay found a place in the wider context of working class struggles.
GAY Rita, The feminine stereotype in student and professional training,
pp. 48-56
It is a fact that
women, in a socially and culturally repressive system, are always twice repressed.
They live a double alienation. The arbitrary ideological basis for much psychological
research into professional and student training is no exception. Those analyses
which make use of the concept of instinctuality speak, when referring to women,
of "typical characteristics". They thus add to the already assumed
"innate characteristics" (also suffered by men) the double assumption
of "biologically determined characteristics".
Rita Gay examines some of the researches and tests on professional attitudes which are based on the polarisation, implicit or explicit, of masculine and feminine behaviour. This polarisation is intrinsic to the dominant ideology in a capitalist system. Thus, for example, women are accorded the attribute "intuitive" an ambiguous term, with no precise scientific content, ignoring the fact that certain patterns of thought and behaviour on their part, far from being spontaneous, are the reactions of the oppressed to demands, desires, threats and even violence on the part of their oppressor.
Starting from these typical and innate characteristics it is but a short step to single cut "feminine" preferences and "typically feminine" vocations, founded on a supposed maternal and altruistic outlook, an absence of enterprise and initiative. Women who exhibit tendencies which do not match this stereotype are considered masculine type women. Often, by interiorising these roles, women themselves come to share these assumptions.
Rita Gay deplores
the fact that critical evaluation of these elements is lacking in this type
of psychological research, and denounces the political use of theories which
propel and confine women (and men too, in a different way) into particular professions
and activities.
MORGAN Patricia, Mother Nature - Feral Man?, pp. 57-70
The article provides a rational critique of the "nature theories" on the mother's role in the formation of the child's personality. These theories, fashionable in the English speaking world and based on Kleinian psychoanalysis and on certain dubious ethological studies, see mothers as having the chief responsibility for the future mental health of the children, and therefore, through the children, also responsible for the harmony of macro-and micro-social relationships.
According to these theories, the child has an established personality by the age of five, and is supposed to be endowed from birth with a knowledge and comprehension of the world which will allow him to make precise demands, and to feel a fatal frustration if those demands are not satisfied. In other words these theories assume what they purport to explain! They deny the importance and the influence of the whole process of learning and inculturation through symbols - of language, for example - which is characteristic of all cultures. Numerous studies on criminality show these theories to be untenable.
The determining factor in the behaviour of an individual is not the experience of the first years of his life, but the influence of the milieu in which he lives. The theories which exalt and mystify maternity make no contribution to understanding human development. They have a social purpose: to relegate woman to the private domain, insisting that she gives full time to rearing her children. Not only is this fatal for the woman; it is fatal for the children.
FALTERI Paola, Women and the Mass Media, pp. 71-79
The crisis in mass communications studies, due partly to lack of theory and partly to the fragmentation of empirical research, becomes especially clear when we look into the function and the effects of the mass media on the socialisation of women, and on their role as the transmitters of culture. Semeiology, aiming to re-interpret the communication processes from the standpoint of signs, has so far neglected the analysis of the cultural or subcultural codes of different social groups, and this has greatly limited the value of the research carried out.
In the process of communication, the chief inconsistency, according to Falteri, lies in the private usage of messages intended for the public. This problem is all the greater for women, already relegated to the private domain. In fact, the mass media constitute a means of social interference, control and manipulation which reinforces the subordination of women.
MORREALE Maria Teresa, Notes on Women's Education in the two Germanies,
pp. 80-87
In spite of bourgeois feminist struggles, notably by Louise Otto, to eliminate discrimination against girls and women, the remnants of medieval thinking still persist in women's education in Germany. In the Federal Republic of Germany equality of girls and boys, guaranteed under the law, is not yet a reality. The situation in the German Democratic Republic, thanks to different social and political premises, seems at first sight to have been revolutionised.
According to official statistics women are to be found in all sectors of the educational system, and the lower proportion of women - either as students or professors - in the universities, is diminishing. Our reservations have a different source. Why is it that, after more than thirty years of socialism, when the politicians speak of women's political contributions, they mention only their minor battles in everyday life…?
PORTELLI Alessandro, Malcom X's Anti-Feminism, pp. 88-100
Alessandro Portelli has tried to bring out the complex and difficult relationship between the black (or any other) revolutionary left and women's liberation, using Malcolm X as his point of referral. He in no way tries to belittle Malcolm X's work, or to judge him on moral or personal grounds, but bases his analysis on a critical re-reading of the great revolutionary's autobiography.
He tries to define those threads of the dominant culture which take root even within the most intransigent of oppositions, and Malcolm X is an especially interesting example. It was this revolutionary who, in his analysis of racism, first developed the concepts of the link between political and personal oppression, and the cultural dimension of oppression, concepts which have inspired and greatly influenced feminism.
But Malcom X's image of women, his image of the ideal relationship for the couple, has little to do with the life women actually lived in his community, with the social situation of black families in America or indeed with his own family, petit bourgeois and Anglo-Saxon authoritarian, which he holds out to us as the model, even worse in its Puritanism and its anti-feminism than that of the oppressors of black America.
FONTANA ROSE Eleonora, The juridical social and political Situation of women
in the Scandinavian Countries, pp. 101-126
The article first lists the main juridical achievements of women in the Scandinavian countries. We are told of the updating of laws on maternity, marriage separation, divorce, women's work, social services and inheritance systems.
The second part deals with the real situation of women in Scandinavian society. It is based on statistics, demographic, economic and political, and on a great many sociological researches, particularly research into the position of the housewife. In fact the real situation lags far behind the law.
Structural deficiencies, on the one hand, make any real change in the lives of women very difficult, and on the other hand, cultural conditioning, still today, is a great obstacle to women's liberation and their integration into production and into public life. The feminist movements which are described in the third part have greatly strengthened of late. Their aim is to attack the underlying causes of this situation, using a variety of strategies.