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Irene REVELANT, Don Chisciotte era Una Donna [=Don Quixote was a Woman], edited by Roberta Osso, preface by Bruno Malattia. Publisher/year: senaūs/June 2006; printer/size: Grafiche Manzanesi/pp. 111; ISBN 88-901571-3-5; selling price in Italy: € 8

An English-born, dual-national (British-Italian) resident of Friuli Venezia Giulia - one of three regions in Italy’s dynamic “Nordest” (=North-east), Mrs Revelant is a businesswoman, the wife of an entrepreneur and the mother of a teenage daughter, who has devoted a significant part of her latest years to politics. Since this experience came to an abrupt ending (albeit temporary, as we shall see)- much against her own will, she decided to relate her story in a short pamphlet. In its ten chapters we thus read her biography, of her way of thinking, her mainly bitter comments-the leading theme being discrimination, one may say.

Coming to live in Italy after her Cambridge years, Revelant graduated at the seaport city of Trieste with a degree in interpreting. She then worked in a few companies until, in ’86, she set up her foreign language school and translating/interpreting agency (“Business Voice”), at Manzano. This commune - 7,000 inhab., in the province of Udine – is the very heart of an industrial district which was long known as the world’s capital of the chair sector before it was challenged recently by ever-growing Chinese competition.

Irene first met with inequity at the outset of her career. When founding her language concern, for instance, she was appalled by a financial institution demanding her to pay a far higher interest rate than that expected of men. She now also reproves banks for not granting credit to new firms being set up, while offering it to companies that really do not need it. Or for not making State funds available to women launching their typical businesses, i.e., small and medium-sized firms. Also executive and managerial posts subsist as men’s realm especially in the bigger concerns.

Coming to politics, where she attempted to introduce an entrepreneur-friendly mentality, Revelant was in charge of productive activities as “assessore” (=councillor) in both the communal and provincial ambits. First for Manzano, later for the governing council of the Province of Udine. In this second role, she also supervised technological innovation and equal opportunities-the latter she quickly found out to be fictitious assignment.

Mrs Revelant’s deep-rooted conviction has come to be that anybody in Italy wishing to help their community by entering politics is quixotic, doomed to failure since they will be unable to change anything of the system as it is-whence the title (the writer of this review was once discouragingly told by a noted intellectual that Mussolini himself believed that trying to govern Italians, rather than impossible, is useless).
The cause of this in Revelant’s case was manifold: the lack of all sort of cooperation between opposing coalitions (“whatever others do is always wrong”), the dislike if not hatred (verging on discredit) nurtured by the members of the very coalition she belonged to, for her success - that of a newcomer’s-; the lack of real leadership and the refusal-or rejection-of its implications; the unwillingness to try any reform of the partly still State-run economy.
Mrs Revelant tells us of her disappointments while working for the Province: first, because of the differential treatment she endured compared with her male colleagues (her budget being trifling; her not being given either an office, a phone or any secretarial help); then, for having to sign, right from the beginning, for the Province’s president, a blank-dated letter of resignation from her post, though regularly elected. Indeed, Irene was given a moral guarantee by the president that he would never revoke her, only to find out that that same president, once their entente had ended, eventually told the press that said guarantee was substantially irrelevant as far as he was concerned.
Part of the friction with her coalition sprung from her criticising (Spring 2003) the time – profusely financed with public money - spent by the provincial council in endless and useless debates (“on the sex of angels”) instead of on the problems of the citizens for which that institution is competent. The President of the Province publicly censored such criticism.
It goes without saying that much of the pamphlet is about how scarcely women are really welcome to a male-mentality-oriented and -dominated political system, the Italian. Whilst elsewhere they have attained important posts as heads of state or government, here their number in politics “is indecently low”: the Interparliamentary Union has it that the country ranks 69th after Zimbabwe and Panama for its trivial number of female MPs. Indeed, here women still have to choose ‘between being fulfilled persons and frustrated mothers’, since part-time is regulated in such a way as not to help them at all; laws on equal opportunities actually demand women, Revelant claims, to stick to their traditional role and forget about any other business (she even recalls what she terms ‘Mr. Berlusconi’s fascist-like invitation’ to them to remain at home and take care of their families). Time and schedules in politics, here, do not help the taking on of their responsibilities either. The press usually refers to them by pointing out qualities rather aesthetic - hairstyle, dress, ornaments - than intellectual, or personal. And when making a public speech, men begin speaking as if what they have to say were unimportant. The author’s conclusion is quite obvious: women must find a new path to politics that may substitute the male-dominated system. But “even males must emancipate themselves and become aware that sharing family work is the foundation of the new social order or system”.
There are a few positive notes, e.g. when she speaks of a conference she arranged, of researches or a documentary she commissioned, or of her attempt at setting up the first regional school for women wanting to become mayors. Criticism gets vitriolic when she writes: “whoever has stolen, received bribes, misused his/her powers, or committed other crimes, has always got a little door open” [=to get back into politics].
Some will feel that Mrs Revelant’s outlook is biased, since, on the one hand, she quit both Mr. Berlusconi’s party (Forza Italia) and his centre-right-wing coalition (it was a mistake, she says, to think that he, as a great businessman-politician, would be able to straighten out the country’s economy); and, on the other, because her rejection of the Italian system goes hand in hand with a continual praise of most of her English experiences, not least her school years.
But when depicting the hypocrisy of her fellow politicians, she shares the belief that the inadequacies of her country’s governing system are but the reflection of its society.
She has now enlisted in the International section of the Labour Party and in a “municipal list” (=lista civica), wanting to devote anew part of her time to her community’s wellbeing.
Once more – just as Shakespeare’s king Henry V (act III, scene I) - she is on the breach, or, to put it in her own words, ready as Don Quixote to fight the giant windmills of the celebrated Spanish novel.