THEIn Libertà it is a flame that must be kept sheltered with kindness, a breath of new air vivifies, one breath of prejudice can turn it off. Laura Hoesch lived following the light, dimly or shining, seeking in everyday life its freedom and others: to live, love, work, dress as you believe, express your ideas.
Civil lawyer, among the best known jurists of the Milanese forumin fact he founded the Regional Commission for Equal Opportunities, dealt with bioethics, of family issues, promoted judicial actions because adoptive mothers had the same rights as natural mothers, against sexual harassment in the workplace and violations of the principle of equality between natural children and born in marriage, A national reference in the defense of civil rights, especially women.
Today it is told in One of many (Baldini + Castoldi), an autobiography That alongside the many causes addressed to the heart to very personal events, loves and pains intertwined with lucidity and irony. The memories slip into and outside the scene, among the classrooms of a court where, starting from the 70s and 80s, he put the principles of a still fresh constitution on the ground, protecting that work on which according to our card, dignity and freedom are founded. And then inside the house, to grow herself, as a daughter and as a woman.
The practice of lawyer in very hot years for civil struggles and memories of the family sphere in the Memoir of Laura HoSch published by Baldini + Castoldi.
In a mix of courage and levity he also tells of his complicated family, of when, twenty years old, he went away from home taking his grandparents.
How did you go?
My family of origin objectively was a disaster, my mother had the vice of the game, everything revolved around winnings and losses and the continuous need for money. What shocks me is that telling the open heart of this difficult relationship for me was constructive. I also wrote that I would like to know my mother today, meeting us as adults would help us understand, understanding us as people. Anyway, the day I went away from home, I had the suitcases in my hand when my grandmother looked at me with my eyes full of tears. I didn’t have the courage to leave her there.
Laura Hoesch, a civil lawyer since 1965, is a national reference point in the defense of civil rights, especially women. (Photo: Claudia Vanacore/LaPresse)
In his story, the ability to intersect lived and law, meat and law is surprising in his story.
But the right is life! We must take it from its abstractness and pour it into the concreteness of life. Do you think that even when you climb on the tram and buy the ticket, you are signing a transport contract regulated by the law.
She writes that in the relationship in the time, at the time, the theme did not seem the value of freedom, but the value of subordination. How did you see this attitude change in women?
On an individual level, some have reached their autonomy, but from a collective and social point of view, we still did not make it. I also see models of a slightly superficial woman, still subject to stereotypes.
What is it due to?
Very often to the family of origin, from how the education that continues to rotate around the pater familias, the man who maintains and protects is set. I do not change much in the fact that I also see that in the fact that, in the family, the father’s equal participation in the care of the children is not changed in the collective level. The management is delegated to mothers who organize themselves with babysitters. Furthermore, they often tend to omit their father, almost for a sense of ownership on their children. Men take advantage of it to defy. Equality is still a chimera.
She worked a lot for this equality and against discrimination. Even with historical causes. Tell us about that of the “miniskirt”?
An Ansaldo employee had fallen into the workers’ department to deliver some documents wearing the miniskirt. The workers, all in the suit, seeing it enter, begin to applaud and whistle. The manager intervenes and, instead of inviting them to respect, asks her to cover herself with a suit. The cause was of a colleague who did not want to do it and associated me. I won by claiming that the manager’s behavior had the connotations of “gender discrimination”.
Consistency and freedom of thought also cost her the escape from the PCI to which she was registered …
It was when Mosquitothe Journal of the students of the Parini high school, in 1966 published an investigation that also spoke of sex education and premarital relationships. A huge scandal, a group of parents denounced the authors for “obscenity in the press”. The process was followed by 400 journalists, also by Mondi and from New York Times. After the trial, the boys were acquitted, thanks to the college of defense made up of some of the most important criminal lawyers in Italy: Giandomenico Pisapia, Carlo Smuraglia, Alberto from the time …
Milan, 1966: young people protest against the censorship of La Zanzara, Il Giornale delle Students of the Liceo Parini accused of “obscenity in the press” (Photo: Gianni Gelmi)
What did you do?
The theme was close to me, so I organized a debate in my martyrs section of Modena di Baranzate, inviting the professors of Parini who had been on the side of the boys. A unique thing, a great success of the public, many noticed …
… not the heads of the PCI …
Indeed, my name was reported as subversive, libertarian, non -Stalinist, to the direction of the PCI of via Volturno. I belonged to the international fourth, which was a Trozkist organization. Some time later, I stopped doing active politics, but after all, politics was not an investment for me, but a method of thought stuck in the world.
That world where he preferred to root ideas, using “the process as a source of new and evolutionary social principles”.
Guido Alpa, former president of the National Forensic Council and Master of Civil Law, spoke of “Living Law”: we must make the causes, he said, to have the sentences from the judges and then finally Parliament, when he will see the principles exposed, will make the law.
To date, Parliament’s immobility does not seem to have changed, despite the many “stimulus” judgments of the Constitutional and Cassation Court.
I don’t know, we ourselves no longer make those causes. Perhaps there is greater individualism, more attention to the single problem and not to an evolutionary construction.
That is, the one that moves the parameters of the laws. Tell us another cause that went in this direction.
We made women hire in the municipal waste company, who did not want them because he did not consider them strong enough. If they are, we said, they can load the waste trucks, if they are not in a company there is much more to do. A discriminatory element could not be physical strength.
Another shoulder in favor of the female employee gave it to the regulation of the urban police …
Among the requirements for hiring was the height of 1.75 and this parameter, in practice, excluded women, at the time below this average. We also unhinged this, with the Constitution in hand and guided by the principles of equality that advocates. Then, my son who took a lot of fines, he faults me: “You made the low policemen hired and I don’t see them on the crossroads” (laughs).
He followed the causes of women who had a lower qualifications for the same tasks or against requests for staff only male or containing questions aimed at excluding women, for example, on which date they had the last menstruation. But he grew up in a male model. How did you say your thoughts?
It took time. The study was male, the law was set to men, and therefore I had to behave how lawyers behaved. I did it, I had learned like this, but in reality I was sick. He upset me when, having to go and get one of my children somewhere, I said I had an institutional meeting. Lead, dedicating himself to a son was disqualifying. I made the causes against discrimination, but culture also discriminated against me. Then I started understanding and I decided to say it: I’m going to get the children at school.
A curiosity: it comes from a bourgeois family, his grandfather had a graphic arts company, produced excellence prints for Italian museums that he also sent to America. His father worked with him. How did the great friendship with his “Amati FerratraNvieri” come about?
I made many causes of work for this category, I also defended them from the Royal Decree of 1931 which did not allow them to freely contact the judge in the event of corporate behavior considered illegal. I have known many. One day, in Piazza five days, one of them saw me pass, stopped the tram and opened the front door: “Laura, go up!” … a madness! Without a ticket, so, in the middle of the square (laughs)!
And she got up.
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