This is a project about women and gender equality. This ebook is addressing younger students to raise their awareness  and it is the result of the collaborative work by different partners. The idea is to present women emerging in different fields such as politics, literature, science, using different languages. 

Hello, here I am! I am going to present some important Italian women making the difference in ancient and modern times.

It's a long journey, but don't worry! You won't get lost because I'm taking you on!

Let's be inspired by them !!

 Content

                    Past                                                           Today

History        Hortensia                                            Liliana Segre    

Art                Artemisia Gentileschi                        Gae Aulenti

Literature    Alda Merini                                        Ilaria Alpi

Science        Rita Levi Montalcini                            Samantha Cristoforetti

Music             Mina                                                    Alessandra Amoroso

Fashion        Donatella Versace       Giorgia Tordini and Gilda Ambrosio 

Sports            Deborah Compagnon                        Sofia Goggia

                                                                     HORTENSIA

Hortensia,  the daughter of the Roman orator Quintus Hortensius, is considered probably the first female lawyer in history thanks to a famous oration she delivered in the Roman Forum in 42 B.C.

During the civil war against Brutus, the triumvirate of Marc Anthony, Octavian and Lepidus resorted to taxing the property of 1,400  wealthy Roman women to fund the ongoing war.

The outraged women chose Hortensia to articulate their concerns to the triumvirs and marched to the Roman Forum. Hortensia delivered her famous oration rebuking the triumvirs for proposing to tax women to support wars that they had no part in initiating or conducting. She declared that women would enthusiastically help resist a foreign enemy but would never pay for civil wars. She also questioned the double standard of taxing women but excluding them from public office. The speech angered the triumvirs, but they reduced the number of women liable to the tax to 400 and imposed a similar levy on men.

                                                                LILIANA SEGRE 

She is an Italian Holocaust survivor, named senator for life by President Sergio Mattarella in 2018 for outstanding patriotic merits in the social field.

Born in 1930 into a Milanese family of Jewish origins, in 1938 Segre was

expelled from her primary school after the promulgation of the Italian Racial

Laws. In 1943, she was arrested with her family and deported to the

Auschwitz concentration camp. She was the only survivor among her

relatives. 

After World War II in 1945, she returned to Milan.In

1948, she met Alfredo Belli Paci, a Catholic political prisoner who had also

survived the Nazi concentration camps. The two married in 1951 and had

three children. After decades of silence, in the 1990s she started to speak in public, especially young students, about her experience.

                                ARTEMISIA GENTILISCHI

She is considered one of the most accomplished seventeenth-century artists. She was a baroque painter, initially working in the style of Caravaggio. She lived in an era when women had few opportunities to pursue artistic training or work as professional artists, but she was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence. She had an international clientele.

Many of Gentileschi's paintings feature women from myths, allegories, and the Bible, including victims, suicides, and warriors. Some of her best-known subjects are Susanna and the Elders, Judith Slaying Holofernes, Judith and her Maidservant.

Gentileschi was known for being able to depict the female figure with great naturalism and for her skill in handling colour to express dimension and drama.

Her achievements as an artist were long overshadowed by the story of Agostino Tassi raping her when she was a young woman and Gentileschi being tortured to give evidence during his trial. For many years Gentileschi was regarded as a curiosity, but her life and art have been re-examined by scholars in the 20th and 21st centuries. She is now regarded as one of the most progressive and expressive painters of her generation. 

                                        GAE AULENTI

Gae Aulenti was born in Florence, Italy, on November 18, 1928. She studied architecture at the University of Florence, and then worked for several years in the architectural firm of BBPR. In the 1960s, she began to design furniture, lamps, and other objects, and in the 1970s she turned to interior design. 

Aulenti's work is characterized by her use of unusual materials and her bold, often playful, designs. She  buildings, furniture, lighting fixtures, and other objects for clients all over the world. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, and she received numerous awards, including the Compasso d'Oro, the most prestigious award for Italian design. Gae Aulenti died in Florence on October 31, 2012.

                                                       ALDA MERINI

She was an Italian writer and poet  (21 March 1931, in Milan – 1 November 2009, in Milan). Her work drew the attention and the admiration of other Italian writers, such as  Salvatore Quasimodo, and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

At the age of fifteen she wrote her first poem. Her school teacher, impressed, brought it to the attention of literary critic Giacinto Spagnoletti, who replied with an enthusiastic critique. When Merini showed Spagnoletti's letter to her father, he tore it apart, declaring: "Poetry will never feed you".

The experience caused a breakdown, and in 1947 Merini spent a month in a mental health clinic in Milan. After that she published lots of works. After the publication of the book "Tu sei Pietro" she stopped writing due to her deteriorating mental health.

Later she was sent to the psychiatric hospital where a difficult period of silence and isolation began.

During this time she gave birth to Barbara and Simona, adopted by other families. 

In 1979 Alda recovered her health and began writing again, permeating her poems with her dramatic and painful experience in mental institutions.

After the death of her husband, Alda began a correspondence with  doctor Michele Pierri. 

She married him the same year, moving to his home in Taranto. Here she had another bout of serious mental illness and for a short time entered a local mental institution. 

Alda returned to Milan in 1986, where she was treated by the psychiatrist Marcella Rizzo.

Finally achieving some serenity, Alda was able to live outside of mental institutions in her 

apartment on the Naviglio.

She continued writing until the end of her life.

                                                    ILARIA ALPI 

She was an Italian journalist and photojournalist, murdered in Mogadishu, where she worked as a correspondent for TG3, together with her cameraman Miran Hrovatin

(Rome, May 24, 1961 - Mogadishu, March 20, 1994) .

She graduated from the Liceo Tito Lucrezio Caro in Rome. Thanks  to her excellent knowledge of languages (Arabic, French and English) she obtained her first journalistic collaborations from Cairo on behalf of Paese Sera and de l'Unità. Later she won a scholarship to be hired by Rai.

She was killed in Mogadishu, together with the operator Miran Hrovatin, on March 20, 1994, in circumstances that have never been clarified. Her body is buried in the Flaminio Cemetery in Rome.

Ilaria’s mother, Luciana Riccardi Alpi, (1933-2018) undertook, from the first trial, a battle to seek the truth and bring down all sorts of misdirections on the murder of the journalist and her cameraman.

                                    RITA LEVI MONTALCINI

She was an Italian neuroscientist who was awarded the Nobel 

Prize in Physiology and Medicine for her discovery of nerve growth factor.

Born in 1909 in Turin she went on studying medicine at university despite her father's opposition to women in science. She was forced to halt her academic career due to fascist laws in 1938, but continued her research in secret. After World War II, she moved to the US and  set up a research lab at Washington University in St.Louis. 

She was a pioneer in the study of the development of the nervous system and her work is still influential in the field of neuroscience today. She passed away in 2012 at the age of 100.

                                            SAMANTHA CRISTOFORETTI

Samantha Cristoforetti (born in Milan, on 26th April) is an Italian astronaut and aviator, the first Italian woman in the crews of the European Space Agency and the first European woman commander of the International Space Station.

Born in Milan in 1977, she is originally from Malé (Trento), the city where she grew up. In 1994 he decided to further his academic career by moving to the United States of America where, thanks to the Intercultura program, he attended Saint Paul Central High School in Saint Paul, Minnesota for a year. She completed her high school studies first in Bolzano and then in Trento and obtained a master's degree in mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Munich, Germany in 2001.

In 2001 she began her career as a military pilot being admitted to the Air Force Academy of Pozzuoli. After completing her studies, she spent a period in the USA to achieve combat readiness, and then three years in the department, reaching the rank of Captain.

I respect Samantha a lot because she has always worked hard to achieve her goals. He has always represented Italy perfectly.

                                                    FABIOLA GIANNOTTI

Fabiola Giannotti was born in Rome on October 29, 1960.

She’s  an Italian physicist. She graduated in Physics specializing in sub-nuclear physics in 1984 at the State University of Milan. 

She joined CERN in 1987 working on various important experiments. In February 1992,  Fabiola participated in the ATLAS experiment. It’s considered the largest scientific experiment ever.

On 4 July 2012 she announced the first observation of the Higgs boson. Since 1 January 2016, she has been the General Director of CERN and she is  the first woman to have received that designation ever.

In 2019, she was selected  for a second term as General Director and will lead the CERN until 2025. She also graduated in piano from the Milan Conservatory.

                                                                    MINA 

Anna Maria Mazzini, one of the most renowned Italian singers, was born on 25 March 1940.

Famous for her incredible voice, Mina was an international star and is considered one of the best artists of all time.

She grew up in Cremona city and her nickname of "Cremona Tiger" was given to her by her friend, the journalist Natalia Aspesi.

She began her career singing pop songs with a "jazzy" feel in the late 1950s and her first television appearance was in 1959. In the following two years she took part in the Sanremo Music Festival. She made history on television and then suddenly, inexplicably decided to retire in 1963.

Personally, she is an amazing woman because I am really impressed by her voice, I love her songs!