L’Alpe 4 - Donne di montagna

This issue of L'Alpe calls into question, and perhaps ultimately a crisis, at least two of the most widespread stereotypes in the Alpine imagination: on the one hand the rough and severe mountain, breeding ground of male figures such as the hunter, the smuggler and the mountain guide , on the other the mountain cradle of poor women, "two-legged beasts" forced to do double work in the fields and in the house during the long migratory absences of the men. In reality, however, we discover women porters and shepherd women with the same professional dignity as their male companions and, in the villages seasonally entrusted to the fairer sex, we find generations of proud and autonomous mountaineers, authentic "directors" of community life. Alps land of women? There is no shortage of elements that lead us to believe that women occupied a central place in Alpine societies, experiencing early freedom. The world divided: men emigrated and women remained. When the men left, the women became the "mistresses of the village". Two-legged beasts: "We saw girls aged 10 to 12 carrying towering baskets on their precociously curved shoulders, and not even a man to lend a hand!" The precious milk: the wet nurse left the town, the family and the newborn baby. The sad emigration of mothers and girls from the Venetian mountains. The emancipated women of Queyras: unlike the Mediterranean area, the customs of the Alpine communities did not impose a rigid sexual division of labor. The porters of Valle Cervo: they were such skilled and appreciated professionals that, already at the beginning of the 1900s, they received the same pay as men. The costume mirrors the community: the clothing of an Alpine community is like a mirror that refers to the values of the different groups that constitute it. The high fashion of the high mountains: in Savoy the tradition of costume is revived, with a creative spirit that has not given way to the simplifications of tourism. The happy time of the mountain pastures: the women of Premana, in the mountains of Lecco, remember the summers of the mountain pastures as the best time of their lives. The voice of the shepherd: young women against the taboos of a tradition that has always been male. The joys and sorrows of a new profession. Women and oxen from your countries? On the farms of South Tyrol the farmers can no longer find women to marry. So women from distant countries took the path to the farm. The dark evil: in the climate of post-unification Italy, the fragile women of a Friulian village under the yoke of science and superstition.