Aletta Blogt

On the way back from Urbino where I attended a workshop of the project on discrimination and violence experienced by second generation migrant women in six European countries (Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK) I decided to visit the Italian women’s library in Bologna. I had met the dynamic director, Annamaria Tagliavini, in various meetings somewhere in Europe, but this was the first time I would visit their premises.

The center is located within the ancient city walls and is housed in an old convent. Annamaria immediately showed me the fresco with the image of Saint Cristina, after whom the convent is named. She is not a very well-known saint, but her career makes her eminently suitable for the present occupants. She was murdered defending her chastity. Pictured in full hijab she has crossed her languid arms over invisible breasts, eyes raised piously to heaven.

The sisters who populated the convent in her name took purdah seriously. No man was allowed to lay eyes on them, so they sang behind a curtain. As this was their main vocation, besides baking cookies for the thriving middle classes and washing their dirty linen, the invisible choir reached heavenly standards: their seemingly disembodied voices reminded the artistically inclined believers of angels descending from great heights to please the ears of the pious.

The present day feminists who administer the centre housed in this complex have a rather more open attitude towards the outer world. Their 20.000 volume library is open to visitors who can browse at will. The staff make special efforts to reach out to women from migrant communities, offering courses in internet and writing skills and Italian.

The history of the center is shorter than Aletta’s. In the mid 1970’s the women’s association Orlando (name after the famous hero/ine of Viginia Woolf’s novel of the same name) started agitating for a library and documentation centre for women. With ample support of the Bologna municipality the library opened its doors in 1982.

If the municipality is in a leftist mood it is the library’s major ally in its fight for the rights of Italian, migrant and refugee women. No easy task, in a country which keeps reelecting a figure like Berlusconi as their president, and which scores high on the xenophobia scale the European Fundamental Rights Association based in Vienna is developing. Italy is at roughly the same high level as Denmark, another country in our project on violence against migrant women.

Apart from lending, documentation and referencing services, the centre also runs a counseling service in which women are advised on issues related to the problems they face in their daily lives, such as violence and in the labour market. Serious cases are referred to the women’s shelter or to specialized services.

Contacts between our two institutes, though minimally as far as physical visits are concerned, have proved to be fruitful. The Bologna center has been inspired by the Herstory project of Aletta, in which life stories of migrant women have been and are being collected.
In my turn I feel inspired by the open and accessible atmosphere in the center and the cultural programme they are running: exhibitions are held in the wide open space in the large courtyard. The Bologna group is also very active in their outreach work towards vulnerable communities of women, such as migrants.

On my return I visit the majestic san Petronio church, the main fresco of which portrays a trinity in which Christ crowns Mary, under the imposing figure of God. Caught within the confines of the oval shape of the mystical mandorla this scene has always reminded me of a huge shining and vibrating vagina giving birth to these Christian gods. At the time, the 15th century, the relationship between Christianity and Islam was as strained as it is now, for the Prophet Mohamed was painted by Giovanni di Modena, as being torn apart by a horned devil in the section which contains a vision of hell, dominated by a huge man-devouring (through his mouth and through an opening between his legs) Lucifer. In 2002 a Muslim fanatic got so irritated, belatedly, by the unhappy position in which his prophet was pictured that he intended to bomb the church. It is ironic that the hijab of the venerable Saint Cristina is the topic of much controversy in islamophobic circles when Muslim women decide to wear it. Tolerance, justice and equality still seem a long way off in this world and both Aletta and the Bologna women’s centre have our tasks cut out for us.