Donna Woman Femme – Italian Magazine also in English

November 2010

 

DWF donnawomanfemme is a quarterly journal which since 1975 has been regarded as a significant reference point for all interested in women’s culture, theory and politics. DWF is published by the Cooperativa Utopia which owns it and distributes it in Italy. It is available on subscription and in selected bookshops in Italy. The editorial board is composed of: Patrizia Cacioli, Federica Giardini, Paola Masi, Claudia Bruno, Federica Castelli, Teresa di Martino, Angela Lamboglia, Eleonora Mineo, Antonella Buonauro.

In each issue:

• the editorial – introduces the central theme of the issue
• section materia – a section including contributions on the central theme
• section poliedra – a section including significant previously unpublished articles, translations of important essays, shorter papers by younger scholars introduced by an already well-known scholar
• section selecta – a section including reviews of books, meetings and conferences, film and theatre etc.
• abstracts and notes on contributors

DWF donnawomanfemme addresses all who are interested in women’s research; it aims at developing and providing tools for a fuller understanding of women’s thought, history and culture, in order to inhabit the world with ease and intelligence.

ABSTRACT OT THE LAST ISSUE

Negotiating with the symptom – Laura Storti

Laura Storti, psychotherapist, starts from the idea of negotiation as a political practice and entrusts it to the narration of three women, her patients. Three stories that start from bodies, three lives in which work is the background, sometimes as an object of desire, sometimes as an obstacle to the desire itself. To negotiate with the symptom, this is the strategy proposed by the author because, she says, in the case of negotiation at work, as in any other kind of negotiation, you can not keep out yourself.

Between dependence and independence. An analysis of the economic support of the family in the era of flexibility – Ottavia Nicolini

Flexibility today applies not only to labour markets but also to the private sphere of family relationships. Taking the case of Italy, one can see that the role of the family in supporting young women and men has enormously increased. In fact, due to a lack of appropriate welfare’s policies, italian families provide not only an affective environment but, more and more, they play a essential role in the economic support of youth in their everyday life. This article focuses on this phenomenon and analyses the impact of such (economic) family relationships on the development of one’s sense of dependence/independence. Using a gender perspective and through an analysis of public discourse as well as autobiographic text, the author discusses the ambivalent meaning of such a issue, as far as this could refer, at the same time, to women’s intergenerational solidarity or to vicious circle of care and dependence.

Towards a new political culture of everyday life – Laura Colombo

Intercity-Intersex is a group of women and men interested in how feminism changed the world. The group organises week-end in some of the nicest cities of Italy, where people can discuss some crucial political issues regarding the relationship between sexes. The title of last meeting was: The culture of the relations in politics and in everyday life, and the main concern was how to balance self-government and need in relationships and in own life.

A new theory on work for women – Interview with Susanna Camusso by Teresa Di Martino

A long interview with Susanna Camusso, in which she tells its own path as a woman within the CGIL and the women’s movement, two worlds intertwined since the early Seventies to create an experience for a perspective of social change and for workers. In a time where trade unions have been accused of speaking an old language and where women feel increasingly alone in the workplace, Camusso proposes to start again from the CGIL workers network, “the only organization of social mass and politics in Italy, which counts a real presence of women, also in major structures”.

Rights and protections, which narration? – Pina Nuzzo

The national Udi delegate starts from the topical and urgent issue of the age of retirement equivalency between men and women to retrace the steps of a journey, the struggles for emancipation, wich led women at work to be “highly protected on paper, but highly discriminated in reality, because a female worker – which is often a mother, and is always suspected to be it – must carry on his own shoulders the burden of motherhood, which never became a social value”. For women who see moving away the date of retirement, for young women who will never have a pension, Pina Nuzzo asks for a narration which goes beyond the rhetoric of the protection and capable of dealing with a female welfare.

Unravelling. Meanings of the word “work” – Studio Guglielma, Matri_x

In 2005, Matri_x group and Studio Guglielma have started an itinerant thinking over journey on the theme of work. Verona, Rome, Messina: three different working settings and cultures put in a comparison, in order to ponder the matter concerning new materiality, new rules and standards, works and activities; in order to think over together the work issue starting from its more concrete meaning and from the rank place it occupies in our lives; in order to skin the word until its truest substance. A few years later, our aim is to present here a collection of those opinions and thoughts that have encouraged the collective research of those women, and to put forth again that wisdom made up of experience and dialogue to which “I giorni e I lavori” has been able to give life to.

More information:

www.dwf.it/