Paola Ferrari, Diletta Leotta and Melissa Satta: why do women continue to fight each other at work?

Maybe it’s because life has accustomed women to fighting to have their role recognized at work. There are environments where this is more true than others: television, for example, still remains a place where a woman, precisely as such, can still risk being relegated to the role of valet. And perhaps this is objective gender gap never completely healed to unleash, more often than one would like, a female rivalry that doesn’t play into the cause. Instead of demanding to be recognized for their abilities, asking for it from civil society before even from the employer, women sometimes find themselves attacking each other, throwing barbs at each other to belittle themselves, commenting on the merits of others by relating them with their own.

Women often still find themselves justifying their presence in a role of power. And they often do it not towards men, but towards other women. Often – too often – professional merit is questioned. The result is that the much-vaunted solidarity between women seems to disappear in the face of back-and-forth that is not very edifying for everyone. A bit like what was created between Paola Ferrari and Melissa Satta, to the sound of interviews and criticisms hidden by flattering premises. «She is beautiful but…». «It’s true, I take off my jacket but…».

Paola Ferrari, Melissa Satta and Diletta Leotta: what they said to each other

In the beginning it was Paola Ferrari, in her «battle against the spectacularization in an aesthetic sense of the female figure in football» to explain in an interview how mortifying, from his point of view, was the role that Sky had assigned to Melissa Satta, with «that “off the jacket” moment, in which she remained in her top, amid the laughter of the men in the studio». Of course, Paola Ferrari had anticipated what she was about to say “It wasn’t an attack on Melissa, who is beautiful”and which she has always defended against those who accused her of compromising the career of her partner Matteo Berrettini.

This is just a minute before we talk about Diletta Leotta, also very good – says Ferrari – even if no one notices it. “Diletta is smart and lucky, she makes a lot of money, lucky her, but you can’t mythologize an image of a perfect woman with breasts that defy the force of gravity, it’s not real,” she told Corriere.

Melissa Satta’s response takes a while, but then arrives during the interview with Francesca Fagnani a Beasts. «This is a rose icon. What’s wrong with taking off the jacket, does it take away a woman’s professionalism?”. According to Paola Ferrari, a little yes, given that in the end she finds herself reiterating to the microphones of A day as a Sheep whether it is Melissa Satta or Diletta Leotta «they are not journalists but splendid showgirls». As if to say, let’s give each one the role it deserves.

Because precisely, still and always, the problem is roles. Roles that are not enough for everyoneroles that are assigned not always on the basis of ability but often on the basis of aesthetic characteristics, and this is also a fact. Roles that perhaps should be defended regardless, if a female side, in this war on the gender gap, really existed. Or rather, roles that perhaps could be discussed, but trying to truly make a revolution, together. And it is not a question of “female quotas” regardless, but of deciding who and what we are fighting against. And to understand that it is better to do it together.

May it not be a question of women, but of people, Paola Ferrari explains it very well in her interview, naming the many colleagues she likes. Simona Rolandi, but also Alba Parietti, someone who has always focused a lot on her physical appearance, also – she herself admitted it to Beasts – to please and please men, precisely in that attempt to “turn into an object of male appreciation” that Ferrari so much criticizes Diletta Leotta.

The impression is that, on one side or the other, women must first of all defend themselves from being women. And if they manage to do everything properly, we like them, even though they are women. One would expect this reasoning more from a man. And yet, once again, it seems an opportunity has been missed.