I have grown up in a great man’s shadow. All my life, I’ve been a symbol. A symbol is eternal, changeless… an abstraction. A human being is mortal and changeable, with desires and impulses, hopes and despairs. I’m tired of being a symbol, Chancellor. I long to be a human being! This longing I cannot suppress.
Queen Christina, 1933 | Rouben Mamoulian.
i’ll never forgive old hollywood for causing my one fetish: light petting in park benches near street lamps at night
Leonilde Iotti, commonly known as Nilde Iotti (10 April 1920 – 4 December 1999) was an Italian politician of the Communist Party, the first woman to become president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies for three consecutive legislatures from 1979 to 1992.
A member of the Communist party (PCI) and its successor, the Left Democrats, Nilde Iotti was born in Reggio Emilia, the reddest province of Italy’s reddest region, into a working class family. A diligent pupil, she won a scholarship to Milan’s prestigious Catholic university – which left no traces of religiosity. An untormented atheist, she died without a priest at her side.
Having graduated in 1943 in Philosophy, she joined the Resistance. The war over, she became a leading organiser of the PCI-dominated Union of Italian Women (UDI). After the end of the war and the referendum against the Savoy Monarchy, in 1946, she was member of the Constituent Chamber, and one of the 75 members of the Committee entrusted with the drafting of the Italian Republican Constitution. Her considerable female support was soon noticed. Women had just obtained the suffrage. She was selected for a safe constituency and – at 26 – elected to the constituent assembly carrying lightly her identities: young, female, a Communist, and a graduate.
In April 1948 Iotti was elected on the ticket of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) to the Chamber of Deputies, of which she was member without interruption until 1999.
In the 1970s there were generational contrasts with the new women’s movement. She successfully fought for the introduction of divorce and abortion, while warning her younger comrades not to ignore Catholic women’s feelings. Feminists always treated her with the respect due to someone who had started the struggle 20 years earlier.
In 1979 she was elected President of the Chamber of Deputies, the third highest-ranking post in the state hierarchy. She was re-elected in 1983 and 1987, and ruled an often unruly assembly with self-assurance and authoritative impartiality. This daughter of a railwayman and a washerwoman had acquired a regal countenance, a poised and calm presence. In 1992, the name of Nilde Iotti was mentioned for the election of the President of the Italian Republic. She was widely regarded as the best President of the Republic Italy never had.
She died in Rome in 1999. Before the state funeral, an all-women guard of honour stood by her coffin in the hall of the Chamber of Deputies where she had spent her life. She was buried next to Palmiro Togliatti, her manifest last wish.
Thanks to electricalice for reminding me of this anniversary. Sources: (x), (x), (x). An in-depth biography in Italian can be found here.
Star Wars ladies
lauri-l 