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DWF
donnawomanfemme
Roma, Editrice coop. UTOPIA, 1986-
Weights and measures, 1990, n. 12
EDITORIAL, Weights and
measures, pp. 5-l4
GUACCI Rosaria
Getting even with the mother, pp. 15-18
VIVIANI Luciana
Making order, gaining value, pp. 19-27
MORETTI Maria Luisa
An enterprise for a project, pp. 28-30
CAFIERO Bice
Thank God I'm still a rebel…, pp. 31-34
CORIA Clara
The hidden sex of money, pp. 35-42
MARCHIONNI Angela, GHETTI Chiara, CASANOVA Maria
Cristina, SEMEIA Elia
VT.: vogliotutto vostratua, pp. 43-49
The Straits and the Challenge, pp. 50-51
Money Taboos, pp. 52-55 , The Market, pp. 58-59
"Two women, the sacred and money, or how to agree among women on value"
PUTINO Angela
A Mid-way Land, pp. 60-72
VOX FOEMINA V.T.
Images on the origin, the matrix, the coinage, pp. 73-78
CAMBONI Marina
Ideology and Words, pp. 79-90
EDITORIAL, Weights and measures, pp. 5-l4
This issue's aim is to thoroughly reflect on the bond linking the economical dimension of relationships between women with the stages and instruments required to socially translate this dimension in terms of women's interests.
In the seventies and, in a different way, in the eighties, the turn women gave their lives entailed a wealth of acts, attitudes, material exchanges which implied the establishment of an economic principle. Every enterprise constituted by women acts on two orders: the formal judicial-financial order ensuring a place and definition in the world, and the real order of relationships which concretely hold the enterprise together.
The analysis is applied to the review DWF itself, to Utopia, its publishing cooperative, to the significant relationships which granted its birth and its present life: a small group with an object, where changes have taken place through time, here analytically related and interpreted in their political meaning. A concrete exercise of female liberty.
GUACCI Rosaria, Getting even with the mother, pp. 15-18
The first debt is the one a woman feels she owes her mother. There is an originary sense of guilt for the inequality between what we are given and what we can pay back. The relationship with the symbolic mother is therefore pervaded by a feeling of guilt which forces the subject to constantly draw up a "budget", to "put things in order" and re-establish balance, especially after the maternal bond is over.
From this point of view, money signifies the cutting of the umbilical cord; it is the guarantee of one's process of independence. Money brings contradictions into the open, and modifies relationships. The author underlines how for her working in a women's publishing house in significant and creates significant relationships - because this work is also measured, revealed and acted through/by money.
VIVIANI Luciana, Making order, gaining value, pp. 19-27
The author tells how the group was formed which is re-organizing the Central Archives of the Unione Donne Italiane, and publishing its inventory. UDI, a great association engaged in the struggle for women's emancipation, was founded in 1945 and is still very influential in the women's political movement in Italy.
Viviani assesses the political passion, the energy and the time invested by the group in this enormous enterprise, as well as the problems involved in finding financial support. She concludes by listing the personal and political gains the group believes to have won.
MORETTI Maria Luisa, An enterprise for a project, pp. 28-30
Patrizia Cacioli interviews Maria Luisa Moretti, founder and owner since 1977 of the women's bookshop "Al Tempo Ritrovato" in Rome, in order to understand how the economic, political and personal aspects involved in such an enterprise work together. Moretti sees the enterprise - whose great difficulties she confronts realistically - as an instrument to help her realize her personal and political project, i.e. the relation with women, the belief in their and her own value.
CAFIERO Bice, Thank God I'm still a rebel…, pp. 31-34
The author reviews her life, considering how she dealt with the problem of money - seen as a measure of her ability to manage and determine her own life. Her general reflections are based on her professional experience as a psychologist, and can be summarized as follows: "In dealing with money, women find themselves in a double bind. If they are successful in earning money, they risk being considered less competent in their family role. If they fulfil their family role, their image as professionals suffers".
CORIA Clara, The hidden sex of money, pp. 35-42
Paper presented at the International Feminist Bookfair, Barcelona, June 1990. The author, an Argentinean psychologist, lives and works in Buenos Aires. She has written two books analyzing and expanding the thesis proposed in this paper. She maintains that "in our culture, money has a sex. The sexualization of money is a psychosocial phenomenon; as a result, money is considered not only a resource traditionally managed by men, but indeed something which legitimately belongs to man's heritage (…) so much so that it becomes an element of his gender-identity".
Coria looks at three more issues: women's basically conflictual attitude towards money: a "phantasm" related to this conflict; the discriminatory attitudes towards women in therapeutic practices.
MARCHIONNI Angela, VT.: vogliotutto vostratua, pp. 43-49
GHETTI Chiara, The Straits and the Challenge, pp. 50-51
CASANOVA Maria Cristina, Money Taboos, pp. 52-55
SEMEIA Elia, The Market, pp. 58-59
"Two women, the sacred and money, or how to agree among women on value"
Taken as a whole, these texts narrate how, separately and together, two groups of women have faced the problem of finding money for their projects without betraying female freedom. The authors look back on their contacts with the institutions, on the process which has brought them to see money realistically, to negotiate among themselves criteria of reciprocal judgement which would reflect the each one's personal contribution and acceptance of responsibilities.
They have symbolized the bond which enables dignity in the relationships among women by producing a silver coin representing the "Woman of Elche".
PUTINO Angela, A Mid-way Land, pp. 60-72
A philosophical-political speculation on what happens when a woman, taking her body - a woman's body - as her starting point, turns to words, and enables herself and other women to communicate. The "midway land" born of a relational syntax is what will not be defined from outside; on the contrary, it defines everything else from its own location.
The "mid-way land" is not a hiding place, it is the premise of a political action to modify the very structure of society. The author uses the image of the mongol, the nomad, in order to point out a different, more efficient strategy of freedom, with its own norms, its economy, its symbolic money.
VOX FOEMINA V.T., Images on the origin, the matrix, the coinage, pp.
73-78
A detail of the Dame from Elche (Madrid, National Archeological Museum). From its treatment Maria Cristina Giovannini drew the matrix of the coin "vostratua". Three plates illustrate the operation.
CAMBONI Marina, Ideology and Words, pp. 79-90
The linguistic sign is seen as both psychic and social, personal and collective - in the words of Volosinov "a common land of psyche and ideology". This paper ideally continues the work carried on by the author some years ago with a group of Roman feminists; in particular, it is a critical homage to Alma Sabatini (who tragically died in a car accident two years ago) and to her work, which resulted in the publication of Il sessismo nella lingua italiana, commissioned by the National Committee for Equal Opportunities.
If today language is also a site of the conflict
between the sexes, the author claims that the key to the problem lies in women
attributing and recognizing value to other women and to themselves "lying
bare the commonplaces and the expressions which contribute to the de-valuation
of women's ways of being and operating… rooting words, thoughts, actions,
in one's own being, experiencing, thinking".