The price of dreams

This article is published in issue 47 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until 22 November 2022

In this issue we talk about women and money. These two words together seem like an oxymoron, a contradiction, something that doesn’t add up. And it would be too easy to dismiss this feeling as yet another shade of patriarchal culture. It makes me bored even to write it. The words “women” and “money” juxtaposed clash for two reasons. Let’s start with money: we have a strange relationship with money, a sort of shame. It comes from a certain Catholic culture which has taught us that the rich are corrupt and the poor are good. And that money is somehow despised. Second: in 1947 Simone de Beauvoir wrote Femininity is a trap, a fundamental treatise that still explains today how entire generations of women have been raised on ideals such as surrender, generosity and affection, values ​​that seem to have nothing to do with money. Instead, women need money because their dreams, desires and rights are goals that must be financed. Because women’s money isn’t just wealth: it’s earning, saving, investing and therefore independence. In the following pages we have collected many testimonials from women, famous and not, who have built their dreams piece by piece, euro by euro and savings after savings. There is the career of Emma Marrone, a girl who came from nowhere who today decided to tell her story in a documentary. Like her, Claudia Parzani, President of Borsa Italiana, lawyer and writer, also comes from a family that is not exactly the symbol of privilege: I wanted her editorial to follow mine and for her to help us better understand the problem. Don’t miss what she wrote: it’s a manifesto of independence. Then there are many other stories: some collected in this issue, others you will find on our website and on our social networks, in a special that deals in more practical detail with what it means to be independent; and again, how men practice financial violence; how to manage one’s savings, even if they are few (they are never few); finally, what ideas are needed to build a project and how important it is to create a network, or a network of relationships, to achieve one’s goals. Next 25 November will be the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women: on page 93 we bring you a terrible and painful news story, which explains how the economic factor is often at the root of domestic violence against women and their plunge into the abyss. Finally, two clarifications. Reading these stories, one fact becomes clear: when a woman shows she wants to
being independent, wanting to pay the bill, earning more than her male partner, is accused of being harsh, insensitive, wrong. It is further proof of how many steps we still have to take towards gender equality. And again: rights. As the entrepreneur Moreno Zani well explains on page 109, in recent months we have heard politics take a step back with respect to the rights of women and minorities, rights often acquired after years of struggles and battles. But rights are never secondary to inflation and the relative poverty of families and therefore of women. Going back on the possibility of abortion, for example, doesn’t just mean sinking into the past, it also means blocking the economy of a country because the dreams of so many individual women are being blocked. Read the next pages carefully. Whether you are a woman or a man, it doesn’t matter. Because women’s right to economic independence remains one of the cornerstones in the creation of Italy’s future.

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