IS a meeting of gazes, of eyes that recognize each other, of hands that shake to seal a pact, a passing of the baton that writes history. Two women loom large surrounded by men in the background as they follow one another at the top of one of the most important institutions in the world.
It is July 18, 1979 and the protagonists of this moment are Louise Weiss, Dean of the first European Parliament elected by universal suffrage, designated to temporarily preside over the Assembly until the election of the person who would permanently direct it, and Simone Veil, first president of the European Parliament legitimized by popular vote and the first woman to preside over it.
Women who made Europe
For Veil, who had survived the horror of the Holocaust and war, deported to Nazi extermination camps at the age of seventeen because she was Jewish, Europe meant hope, reconciliation. Not only. Also a place of transformations and changes starting from those concerning the role of women in society.
She had given her contribution. A magistrate, health minister and mother of three children, she was always ready to support women’s battles. Like when she fought to get it launched in 1975”la loi Veil“, the law on abortion who legalized abortion in France within the first ten weeks.
And even in the European Parliament it was not enough just to immediately identify the commitments that Europe would have to face: peace, freedom, well-being. She felt that the time had also come for another great challenge: that of gender equality. Just under his presidency the first commission of inquiry into the condition of women in Europe was launchedfrom which the Permanent Commission for Women’s Rights and Equal Opportunities was born in 1984.
Louise Weiss
Louise Weiss was no different. «Journalist, writer, filmmaker, whose faith has never been betrayed by ink or images, it seems to me, at this moment, that I have crossed this century and furrowed the world only to meet you as a lover of Europe»: this is how she defined herself in the inaugural speech given at the age of 86, considered among the most beautiful in the history of the European Parliament.
The headquarters of the parliamentary hemicycle and the offices of deputies and female deputies in Strasbourg are named after her. tireless traveller, he had traveled the world to make his reportages. Already during the Great War he spread his ideas about a European federal union, market, common culture and single currency. Suffragette and pacifisthad become, during the Second World War, partisan and then embark on a political career.
Veil and Weiss are part of that group of women than with foresight and audacity they helped to conceive and build the European project.
The writer and journalist Louise Weiss at her home in Paris. (Photo by Albane Navizet/Kipa/Sygma via Getty Images)
Ada and Ursula behind the Ventotene Manifesto
This year the Union is celebrating two important anniversaries: the 30 years since the establishment of the single market, when the free movement of goods, services, people and capital became a reality, and the three decades since the supranational project took this name.
But long its history has been declined above all to the masculinealmost always linked only to the names of those who are called Founding Fathers such as Altiero Spinelli, Alcide de Gasperi, Jean Monnet. At their own level, however, there have been women who have made a fundamental contribution, whose commitment deserves to be brought away definitively from oblivion.
Founding Fathers and Founding Mothers
«The term Founding Mothers is a matter of principle» writes the researcher Maria Pia DiNonno in the book she edited The Founding Mothers of Europe (ed. New Culture). The text summarizes the main results of the homonymous project funded by the 2016 Call for Research Launch of Sapienza, University of Rome, aimed at give back memory to the women protagonists of the European dream.
To make it clear that they are there too. Brave women like Ada Rossi And Ursula Hirschmann which were decisive for the diffusion of the Ventotene Manifesto, the document that inspired the construction of a united Europe. These two daring anti-fascist fighters, unlike their husbands, political dissidents Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni sentenced to confinement on the island of Ventotene, they did not serve restrictive measures and enjoyed greater freedom of movement.
The Mothers of Europe podcast was born within the GAP project (Young Activists* for Participation) co-financed by the National Youth Agency as part of Erasmus Plus.
Women for Europe group
They put their lives in danger, defying the fascist police to get the pro-European writings hidden inside a chicken, in the shoulder straps of clothes or in the double walls of a box out of the island. It was above all Hirschmann who contributed first person to elaborate the Manifesto and to take care of making it known in Italy and in Europe, she was the true founder of the European federalist movement. Even the one who will become his companion Altiero Spinelli, considered one of the greatest supporters of the pro-European ideal, recognized it.
A political commitment that Hirschmann continued until the seventies with the foundation of the Women for Europe group to promote the active participation of women in the processes of European construction. Work continued from Italian journalist Fausta Deshormes La Vallecreator of the service European information for women. A tireless activist, she was also one of the mothers of European Women’s Lobbythe largest coalition of feminist and women’s organisations, movements and groups in the European Union.
The principle of equality in Europe
They are also Italian Fabrizia Baduel Glorious, trade unionist and first woman to chair the European Economic and Social Committee. And Sophia Corradithe scholar to whom we owe the idea of the university program of Erasmus cultural exchange.
TO Eliane Vogel Polsky, a Belgian lawyer, we must instead recognize the direct applicability of article 119 of the EEC treaty, relating to equal pay for men and women. Polsky, defended the hostess Gabrielle Defrenne, fired when she turned forty, while her male colleagues could continue to work until they were 55. And she also managed to obtain the identification, by the European Court of Justice, of the principle of equality and non-discrimination as a fundamental right of the EU.
Éliane Vogel-Polsky in the 1970s. Institute for the Equality of Women and Men (IEFH)
From the pedagogist to the parliamentarian
«We call them “pioneers” because we see in them women capable of opening new paths. […]. Entering into their stories has the effect of making us feel close even in distant times. For this we feel that all of them could energetically inspire the ways of thinking and acting of those who live today” they write Pina Caporaso And Julia Mirandolaauthors of Pioneer-The women who made Europe (Seven Nine).
Pioneer. The women who made Europe by Giulia Mirandola and Pina Caporaso, Illustrations by Michela Nanut, Seven nine56 pages, €19
It is a book-workshop, illustrated by Michela Nanut, which stimulates the knowledge of fundamental contribution made by women to the history of a united Europe. He proposes 11 biographies of wonderful forerunnersfrom the period of the Resistance until today, interspersed with historical insights.
From Anna Siemsen, German educator, politician and journalist who dreamed of the union of European peoples. Until you get to Jo Cox, the British MEP killed by an anti-European extremist for having mobilized in favor of the permanence of the United Kingdom in the European Union.
Tenacious and resolute women who are committed to build the multicultural and plurilingual forge that is Europea place of progress, enhancement of diversity, integration and peace.
Knowing their stories can help us bring back the authentic spirit that animated them and that shouldn’t be lost, it must always be kept alive. Despite scandals, criticisms and attempts at sabotage, to continue building the present and future of the material and immaterial spaces we inhabit.
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