Alberta Santuccio, Giulia Rizzi, Rossella Fiamingo, and Mara Navarria deserve better

The Paris 2024 Olympics continue to stir controversy in Italy over the treatment of the Italian team's athletes. Following the case of Benedetta Pilato, the swimmer who received unkind comments from former fencing champion Elisa Di Francisca, sparking a public debate on issues such as age-based competition among women, the performance-driven society, toxic productivity at all costs, and the use of power dynamics in interactions between former and current athletes and generational conflicts, it is now the turn of the women’s team épée athletes.

The team épée gold overshadowed by misogyny

Alberta Santuccio, Giulia Rizzi, Rossella Fiamingo, and Mara Navarria achieved a remarkable feat, winning a gold medal. When reporting the news, Repubblica tweeted a headline, now deleted, that read: "Italy wins gold in team épée, French defeated at home. The 4 queens: Diletta Leotta's friend, the Frenchwoman, the psychologist, and the mother." With just a few characters, this headline managed to encapsulate it all: defining them by their relationship to a famous person, by nationality, by a profession unrelated to the specific news context, and perhaps the worst, by motherhood. It is impossible not to see how the result is diminishing, humiliating, and frankly sloppy. In short, it is not worthy of journalism that aims to be contemporary, ready, and up-to-date.

Women are mothers without surname or title

The Olympics incident is certainly not an isolated one. Far too often, in newspaper headlines and the public discourse in general, women are referred to informally, often called "moms," "daughters," or "granddaughters," identified by their relationships or their general status as women, rather than by their titles and merits, recognized as individuals. Sometimes, their surname is omitted, in forced and unauthorized informality, which lowers the tone and makes them feel small, treated like children, like friends rather than champions. Not to mention the opposition to using feminine titles in public acts, which completes a clear picture: women - in Italy and in patriarchal and misogynistic societies in general - belong to those who write about them, not to themselves. They suffer from an attitude that seeks to keep them small, without titles, surnames, or merits, forced to struggle for a designation that is due and taken for granted for men.