The damage Silvio Berlusconi has done to Italian politics and society is so overwhelmingly enormous it is very difficult as a citizen of that country (I have dual US/Italian citizenship) to feel anything but cynical and hopeless. For female Italian citizens, the situation is even more dire. Berlusconi’s blatant and public disdain for women both in his personal conduct and his political appointments has made me so depressed that I have even found myself hankering for the days of Cicciolina, 
the Italian porn star who was elected to parliament in 1987. By comparison, he makes her career look admirable. Things haven’t been too good for women in other spheres of Italian life either.
There’s the Vatican’s persistent exclusion and oppression of women which goes hand in hand with their endless sex scandals; and then there’s the repulsively sexist treatment by the Italian judiciary and press of Amanda Knox, whose acquittal has recently been overturned, her retrial immanent. 
But there is the more quotidian fact that despite Italy’s robust feminist movement in the 1970s, the conditions today for working women at all levels of the workforce are among the worst in the West. The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that over the past two decades Berlusconi’s private media empire along with the state-owned broadcasters under his political purview have routinely and almost exclusively portrayed women as scantily-clad sex toys whose purpose in life is for male pleasure, allowing misogynistic attitudes to flourish.
Then, on April 28th Enrico Letta, Italy’s new Prime Minister, albeit the head of a questionable and unstable new government, appointed SEVEN women to his cabinet–a third of its members. Obama has FOUR. In the U.K. David Cameron has FOUR. (Germany has seven but they comprise fewer than a third. France’s cabinet is fully half women.) From one day to the next, my feelings of defeatism and embarrassment about Italy’s political future have transformed into giddiness and excitement. I want to break out into song, and the lyric that comes most readily to mind is Sam Cooke’s famous “a change is gonna come.” Of course, it’s early days and I’ve lived with Berlusconi long enough to know that things can and will get worse, but the fact that those seven women have been appointed sets a precedent in Italy that will remain for all time. The message is loud and clear: Italians, and especially Italian women, have had enough of their systematic disenfranchisement and want to do something about it.
The most crucial appointment of the seven is Anna Maria Cancellieri–former interior minister–as Minister of Justice. The Italian courts are in massive need of reform. But Cancellieri has most notably been given the incredibly tricky task of dealing with the legal entanglements of Berlusconi who is under four current indictments. Berlusconi has the power to bring this government down at any moment and if he doesn’t like what Cancellieri does, it’s all over. Emma Bonino, a veteran politician, former member of the European parliament, fierce defender of human and civil rights, is now the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Maria Chiara Carrozza, a scientist and academic, will take over the Ministry of Education. Two of Berlusconi’s lawmakers have been given the junior posts of health and agriculture. Josefa Idem, an Olympic gold medalist, will be responsible for sport, youth, and equal opportunity. Last, but by no means least, Cécile Kyenge, born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is the Minister for Integration. Kyenge’s appointment is a huge step forward for Italy whose struggle with racism has a long, fraught history. In fact, her assignment has already been viciously attacked most audibly from the anti-immigrant, radical right Northern League.
On the international stage Italy has long been the well-deserved subject of ridicule and derision. For once, instead of hanging my head in shame over the shenanigans of my adoptive country, I can proudly honor and celebrate something the Italian government has done not only for its own citizens but symbolically for all the world’s citizens. Who knows what will happen in the coming weeks, but in the meantime I’ll be singing Italy’s praises at the top of my lungs for this magnificent seven.
, her fascinating book about Dorothy Wrinch, one of the twentieth century’s most important and controversial mathematicians, now all but forgotten, Marjorie Senechal considers how Wrinch was driven, until her death in 1976, to pursue her scientific vision by the sheer beauty of her idea.
he discusses British director David Lean’s classic film 
, a “woman’s film” about an adulterous affair. Thomson is mystified by the film’s “tacit admission of women’s tragic position, whereas in Lean’s best-loved films (
and 
), the world is dominated by active men doing big things to change history with hardly a female in sight.” For years I have appreciated Thomson’s film criticism — his book jacket claims he is “the greatest living writer on film” — and I regularly consult his 
. So it was with dismay, indeed horror, that I discovered his new book presents the history of cinema, from its origins to the present, with hardly a female in sight.
Nothing. Nor does he mention the well-documented fact that during the silent era, because film was considered a low-class medium and a passing fancy, women controlled the industry. Most of the important stars were women; many of them had their own production companies regularly hiring women as directors, producers, editors, writers, and technicians. (Four excellent books on the subject are: Ally Acker’s 
; 
by Karen Ward Mahar; 
by Anthony Slide; 
Negligible coverage goes to bombshells Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Katherine Hepburn. Mae West? 
Besides creating one hell of a screen presence and persona, she was a highly successful playwright and screenwriter who brought the subject of sexuality and eroticism to the big screen in a big way. She saved Paramount from financial ruin and launched Cary Grant’s career (Thomson, of course, covers him amply). West’s name appears once in Thomson’s book on a list. Jean Harlow? 
Hardly noted. His pages on Ingrid Bergman exist only to describe her as a “compulsive man-izer” and revel in her public downfall following her affair with Roberto Rossellini, whom he lauds as “a collector of spectacular women.” Thomson waxes lyrical about Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock, King Vidor, Fritz Lang, Eisenstein, Peter Lorre, and Humphrey Bogart — all of whom are wonderfully worthy subjects but hardly alone in giving birth to the movies. And so it goes on and on and on. Women’s contribution to world cinema is virtually ignored by Thomson right up to the present.
and Fontaine’s 
