May women and men stop the Italian decline?

Hi all!

As I wait some other Italian friend to meet here and add their voices (that's so important), I place a wish.

That we all, the people, women and men, can stop Italy's decline.

This is a hard time, as politics seems so interested in confronting aggressively on all kind of abstract problems and personal issues of our Prime Minister with justice, and as we all continue to live concretely, on this always changing planet.

A large forcing of "Italian decline" is, in my personal and subjective opinion, its adhesion to a caricatural (and not less wasteful) form of patriarchy.

It has been acknowledged by many past intellectuals (and not-so-seldom with a negative intent) that Italy, and Italian national character, is one of the most pervasive realizations of the stereotype of femininity. And maybe, something true is there on depth, we may have to work on if we really like to grow (stereotypes are always chains - I seldom am categorical, but this is one of the times). It would be quite interesting some Junghian psychologist analyzes collectivity through their symbols: I would be amused learning what could they discover from Italian cinema, maybe they share (or kill) my skin sensation that Sergio Leone characters are so similar to a "collective Animus"...

On some times, the stereotypically feminine image of Italy seems to dissolved, replaced by a sort of (quite unrealistic) masculine-only identity. It happened during Fascism, and it seems to me occurring today.

OK, it always passes. It's our collective form of periodic hystery attack.

Meanwhile (and waiting we build a national shared image a bit less stereotyped, possibly where women do really have some valued place as independent human beings), we face quite concrete problems.

My (incomplete) list:

• Expenses on instruction are shrinking. I'm not saying at research institution and university level (these are underpaid systematically since forever), but at primaryary and secondary(high school's!




• Overall prestige of women (and, by extension, womanhood) is low. Even areas of traditional female authority, like teaching, has lost positions.




• Corruption is too widespread and systematic.




• Models of success to youth are too reductive, insensitive and inhumane. Let's Man, and Woman, return at center of our attention. And, let's the calm grow only coming from work and fatigue, be a value.




• Career path and pay are too unbalanced in favor of men, and against women. This just a minor part of the problem: the larger side is that, especially in the South, women simply do "not" work.




• Women are not enough represented in the Parliament. In the Government, the role of the very few in it is confined to marginal, or marginalized, positions. (Marginal, of course, in Italian view: "Environment", "Equal opportunities", ...).




• The various mafias are everywhere, and quickly gaining weight. Not visibility, of course: this is not their task. Just weight.




• Justice, especially civil, is so unefficient no one has a way to predict when a verdict is emitted (and this discourages foreign investment).




• Water will soon be "privatized" (the Byzantyne way we are able to: to be sold it will not be water itself, but the service of making it arrive in our homes). So, we'll have the old inefficiency at a much higher price.




• The Ugly is dilagating. Italy is a rich country, so why in the heaven is it able to express so an "ugly" and profit-only concrete flow? This is a killing of one of the most beautiful territories in the World.




• And so, so more. As I said the list is so incomplete. And, worse, "mine": other's contribution is essential!

I'm not an ideologist. But I think these problems have little to do with being a leftist, centrist, right-wing, or whatever. They are, simply, life.

Please, let us together help change it!

With love, and hope.

Mauri