Thea
In summer 2006, Italians were flooding the streets to celebrate the national team winning its fourth Football World Cup. Last December, Italy was not part of the tournament for the second edition in a row and for the third time in the country's history. Strangely enough, today an entire generation of Italian teenagers is still waiting to see the national men's team play in such games for the first time. While the country is in mourning, we decided to look away from macho Italian culture and look at women's sports instead, how are they doing? And what can they tell us about today's Italy? Today we're talking to Giorgia Bernardini, the founder of Zarina newsletter on women's sports, including football, basketball, and more, as well as some of the social aspects that come into play. She's also the co host and founder of Goleadora, the first podcast about female football in Italy, which took a prize at the Italian Podcast Awards in 2021. Giorgia. Thank you very much for joining us today.

Giorgia Bernardini
Hi, Thea. Thank you for inviting me.

Thea
It's our pleasure. So let's start with a big question, then. What is the state of women's sports in Italy today?

Giorgia Bernardini
Well, the answer to this question is very articulated. It depends on the area of analysis. For example, if we want to talk about the issue of the professionalisation of sport, some step forwards have been taken. Since this football season, for example, female footballers in Italy are finally considered as professional and that means that they finally have contracts that attest that football is a proper job. But football is a lucky case. On the other hand, no other female sports in Italy is considered professional. In this way, all the other athletes in all the other sports have remained a step behind. And it is not possible to say as of today with certainty, when all the other athletes will be able to come into line. So I plan does not exist. And they fear that resolving this disparity is not even a priority. Among all the issues related to women's sport,

Thea
that's a huge deal to think that all of these sports apart from football, people can be working away sort of putting their whole lives into it. And it's still not recognised as a profession. Is that normal? How does Italy compare with with other European countries on that front? And more generally, I suppose in terms of the funding and the support, I know you live in Germany, how is it there?

Giorgia Bernardini
So being a professional female sport is actually a new thing. It's like a recent thing. In Germany, footballers are professional since more or less 8-10 years, which, if we consider the long history of the sport in the country, this is not a long time. So you can see that the point that sport is a proper job but it is not considered as such. And this is not an Italian only issue, this is an European issue. So the only country where football, female football is considered as a proper job since a long time is the USA where female football is a huge thing. So it really depends on the public home, and how much money flows into the sport. So the two things are really related.

Thea
That's really interesting because I mean, I'm coming to this from from a position of clear ignorance. I live in the UK and I assumed that in large part because again, we're talking about football, when when we're talking about this British women's football teams have gained a certain prominence and they're shown on on national television, and people really, really support them, especially because they they've done so well recently. So I assumethey are considered professionals and and paid accordingly. Obviously, there will still be a shadow of what the men are paid. But in the UK this is the system the same in that other sports still struggle for that professional recognition.

Giorgia Bernardini
Yeah, I have to say England is having a very positive returning right now from winning the European Championship. So this is a fact. Audience numbers have grown and is was confirmed last week as well. Because in the absence of the Premier League, the men championship the Chelsea female team played against Tottenham at Stamford Bridge, which is a huge stadium and the stadium of the main team. The match had a crowd of 38,000 which is a very unusual number of attendance for women football. And the same with smaller numbers is happening in Germany as well, which reached the second place at the European Championship, but it is happening. For the most important teams, which are Wolsburg and Bayern Munich, so the those are huge realities since forever. And right now they are having the positive flow coming from the European Championship. But I would say this is a well known phenomenon in women's sport, which is used to finding visibility and fans in this kind of interstices like in this vacuums that are created in the men's sport. So a window workup, for example, which is taking place right now is a very good or excellent space to give visibility to women's football, which in this way reaches an audience that perhaps in part it wouldn't have. So the most important sport is the male sport. And when the male sport goes aside, for some reason, there is small plays for female sport and starting from them. They grow up.

Thea
And I suppose what you were describing as well, when you were talking about Germany was that there's a there's a kind of a disconnect in that. You know, the major teams like Bayern Munich, the major teams will have a female team with with some visibility. But then I'm wondering about the more grassroots levels, you know, the smaller teams in peripheral regions, smaller towns, smaller cities, in the Italian case, for example, can we say that the grassroots are healthy? are lots of young girls getting into football? Are they being encouraged in within the schools or the kind of the municipal level?

Giorgia Bernardini
Yeah, this is a good question. The schools are a huge problem, because in Italy, at least, we used to play two sports and this is football for like the male students, and volleyball for the female students.

Thea
This was 100% I went to school in Italy, and I was only ever allowed to play volleyball and I'm terrible at volleyball. And I wanted so much to play football, but it just wasn't allowed. It was like you were asking for night to become day.

Giorgia Bernardini
Yeah, that's right. I mean, I used to play basketball back then. And every now and then we got like a chance to play basketball because I was playing basketball and we asked for that. But otherwise, we played a lot of volleyball. And as you can imagine, if you don't create like a platform for a sport, which starts in schools, this is very complicated that at some point girls say "I want to play football" except if she has a brother, or best friend, and then she gets into it otherwise is very complicated.

Thea
I suppose that is one of the things that makes it much more likely for these young girls to get into football. This is something that you talk about quite a lot in your recent book on Muslim women in sports Vilalta, which is on the hijab, sport and self determination, you often emphasise this, the kind of the pop culture aspect at play. So big brands, songs, adverts, Instagram posts, and all of these sorts of things that give these women visibility so that I, you know,I am scrolling in my bedroom, on a Tuesday night can see these women achieving these amazing things. And they take on this international presence, you know, these women become real celebrities, and we invest a lot in them. Do you see social media as a form of empowerment for them in the same way as it might be for you know, the imaginary girls scrolling and hoping that they can be like them? Definitely. Yes.

Giorgia Bernardini
The first point is what you said. So for a girl is easier to open Instagram and see that Muslim girl or a black girl, or a white girl is playing a sport, and then this becomes like, more reachable. So if she does that, I can do that. And it is very important. But then there is another part of this existence of the athletes on Instagram, which is the recognition I mean, if you open an Insta profile, you can immediately see kind of narrative. This is like a small novel about an athlete. So this is my impression. If I start following, for example, Federica Pellegrini. Let's see, let's take the most important example of the Italian sport, she is a swimmer. So if you open Instagram and start following her you have kind of bored and if you scroll backwards, you can see like the history of our victories and defeats and you can see what she does outside sports, what she likes what she wears, if she is a dog or cat person. All those things are part of a bigger profile, which is important. Because I think if we as public get attached to this kind of character to this kind of person, which is at the same time a character on the field, but a person outside the field, then you want to know more. So if you happen to watch the television and see that she is competing at whatever championship, you want to know how this is going. So the things are really related, I think Instagram made a huge step for female sports because they got more visible. And most important, this visibility is not related to sponsorship or money. So no body health have to be linked to this visibility besides the fate themselves. So if they want to show themselves, they can do that, and there is no other implication so to say.

Thea
This is a place in which they get to call the shots, and they get to kind of control that image at the same time as it does obviously allow for them to have the financial power that they wouldn't have otherwise, because the more visible they become, the more people follow them. And the more people like them, the more kind of sellable they are as well. So the more big brands are going to want to come and get involved with them. And that is an essential kind of way for them to, to make the money that perhaps they wouldn't get to make otherwise. And it makes it possible for them to do the job that they want to do.

Giorgia Bernardini
Yeah, I always insist on visibility, because as if the female sport is always at a starting point. And this is like thing, which is like changing all the time, because every victory gives visibility, every loss took visibility. So this is changing bases. And this is very, I think this is a stress for the athletes, because they know that if they don't win, they don't go forward, which is like the point of being an athlete in some point in some ways.

Thea
Well, exactly. So I mean, at the same time as it being a space in which they get to control that image in their in their profile, it also they become public property, people become invested in them. And and so the pressure is intense, not to mention the erosion of privacy and all that sort of stuff. So I'm wondering how all of that how that that kind of climate can the use of social media and I'm guessing this may be as to as to difficult to measure, it's impossible to measure how does it influence not just the athletes social status, but also their performance? Can it be, do you think it can be something that is for better as well as for worse that that extra pressure,

Giorgia Bernardini
Like you said, this is not one way I think this can be for better if they are experiencing good phase and they are winning and so they are getting support, this could be for worse, if they are not experienced a good phase and like not winning and not bringing the the joy to the to the public home that they want to have. And so they get criticised. And this is very risky. So what I noticed is that, for example, this week, Martina Ruchi, which is a football player that is playing in the championship level. And also this idea, which is like the national championship, she made an interview and she talked about stress, anxiety, this this word anxiety is not a word, you hear that often in female sports, because they don't want to talk about how they feel the pressure, if they feel pressure, you don't even hear the word pressure, because this would be being a human, and they are not allowed to.

Thea
that's such an important change. And I think even in the past year, you've seen it a lot with a lot of with tennis players, for example, that comes to the forefront of my mind people discussing their mental health and the pressures that come out of that. And it's interesting what you were saying about how tightly bound obviously how tightly bound the experience someone's experience it is, depending on whether they're having a good phase or a bad phase, whether they're winning or they're losing. It isn't all about that though, it is because even when you think about Italian women athletes recently have been talking about the challenges of doing what they do. And in Italy or even of just being a woman, a visible woman. It's treacherous because the gymnasts, Linda Cerruti, she was doing really well she, you know, was winning. The problem was that she was performing in a way that displeased her public that brushed them up the wrong way she so what happened was she she took a photo of herself with all of her medals because she had won so so big that she was in this incredible yoga pose or in a bikini and she hung her medals from her legs. She just won the European Championships. It was a very impressive strong pose and people really took her took her apart for it, didn't they? Yeah,

Giorgia Bernardini
I mean Linda Ciru's case is emblematic of a sick system whereby the social media audience we spoke about before can turn from a strong supporter to the first detractor with a quick twist. And to comment on social media is very easy. So, I for example, I write about sports. I'm passionate about sports, but I have zero knowledge about synchronised swimming, which is our sport and took some time to discover that what appeared to be an eccentric, let's say eccentric pose with our metals actually was not a yoga pose, as you said, but no, this is classical mechanical movements of the synchronised swimming.

Thea
Oh, but because she was above water, she's like a fish out of water. It doesn't it doesn't quite compute. Yeah, that's

Giorgia Bernardini
Part of it because it was kind of out of our context. So she was the only one, or maybe the few people who knows about synchronised swimming, who could understand what she was doing. When he had her hand, the public saw this kind of strange pose, and she's a woman and obviously, part of being an athlete is everything. Really performative body like very, very beautiful. It's a beautiful body because this is a part of the job so you don't have any other possibility. Even less if you are a swimmer of synchronised swimming. And they started criticising her on a very sexist ik way. So it was it this was the point the point was not her doing eccentric pose, or showing off her metals. This was the kombo between wearing a bikini and having the legs spread, so to so to say. And, of course, that say nothing's about the freedom one every person has of showing however she wants. But this, this happens, because this is very easy to command on social media. And doing it behind a screen is easier than do it like in person.

Thea
Of course that is such a fascinating detail. It encapsulates, as you say, the whole problem, the fact that context is everything. So people will feel they will tolerate women using their bodies and being strong, they will tolerate that as long as they are winning prestige for for the country, and so indirectly for them, the supporters, but as soon as these women take ownership of their bodies and use them in a way that they they can't read along the same lines, it becomes it becomes an issue.

Giorgia Bernardini
Yeah. But what I would like to point out is, I would say that this is this applies not only for women's athletes in Italy, but all over the world. Italy is well known for this kind of backwards mentality in some ways. And I say that even if I'm Italian living in Germany, but I know when I went, every time I read such kind of comments, I feel ashamed. But I'd say if I would live somewhere else, the problem will would still be there. I mean, this is not some is not clearly only italian.

Thea
Yeah. And well, let's talk about another case. And sadly, it's another very frustrating one. Let's talk about the case of Paola Enogu, the captain of the Italian volleyball team. She was at the centre of media debate recently as well right after the volleyball, World Cup. Tell us what happened there?

Giorgia Bernardini The case of Enogu was a good example. For the importance of intersection in the world of sport. Enogu is one of the strongest volleyball player in the world. She's Italian of Nigerian origins. She has been one of the symbols of the excellence of Italian sport, male and female doesn't matter, for some years now. So in October the women's volleyball World Cup was played and everything went well as long as the team was performing and winning. And she is well and good while maintaining her usual very high standards but at the end of her match against the USA, which Italy won and which was played not for the expected golden medal, but for the bronze medal, a video of Enogu was taken, in which she was talking to her manager. This video was recorded from a spectator of the audience. To me, it was a kind of intercepted outbursts on the sidelines, I had the feeling in some ways Egonu was stillness and she was experiencing a kind of adrenaline rush. There the game was, came to the end, like four minutes, it was very shortly after, and a random person from the audience took this video, and in which you can really see her saying, "they even asked me if I am Italian". And "this is my last game from the national team". So besides the things that she was still, in the performance, I would say the game was came to the end, but she was already playing in some way, in some ways. The videos is controversial, and open up several questions, in my opinion, the first question is that the fact that a spontaneous video was shared, so widely, it was very private, she was talking to her manager after a game, and the athlete was not protected. And then the fact that this is not the first time that the audience has offended or violently attacking an athlete for not bringing home the hoped for results. But the problem here is that their offence has to do with the fact that a wide audience is willing to concede, "Italiannes" to a black athlete, as long as she is one winner. But if she's no longer she is no longer Italian either. So that was the point that was the the offence in it. And we know this kind of behaviour already in the Italian history. This kind of you are only one of us as long as you win. And we had the same story with Mario Balotelli, which is football players still playing. But now in Turkey, I think he was very well known. But then he has many he had many issues in Italy as well. And then he started to, to change his way of behaving on the field, and so on. So whether or not a Egonu will play for the national team has not yet been clarified. We don't know it. But the point is that these dynamics are quite classic in the world of Italian sport. And there is an interesting story about Eniola Aluko. Eniola Aluko is a former Black English football football player who had played for Turin, I mean, in Turin for Juventus. And she shared that experience in an article in The Guardian, where she described her experience of how frustrating it was to be followed in shops, by shop assistant for fear that she will steal something in Italy so that that was out the reason why she cancelled her contract earlier than then she had to play for Juventus because she couldn't make it anymore. Like being handled like a thief.

Thea
She I mean, she actually left the country, she actually made a huge career decision because of the social pressures that are the social experience that she was having. That's tragic, very sad. Very sad. Indeed. I mean, as you say, I mean, I would love to think that this kind of treatment was, was limited. I mean, I wouldn't love to I'm half Italian as well, I hate the idea that, that it exists in Italy. But my point is, as you said before, it's not a uniquely Italian problem. It may be particularly acute there. But of course we see it here in the UK, where I live now as well, all the time, that kind of the prevalence of racism and all forms of bigotry, really, which do seem particularly acute when it comes to teams winning and losing. I wonder whether we need to try to find something more positive to talk about. So let's let's turn to the last Olympic Games, you interviewed the Italian boxer, Irma Testa she was a bronze medalist in Tokyo 2020. You described her career as a social emancipation, which is a very interesting idea. I think. Can you expand on that for us?

Giorgia Bernardini
Yes, of course, Irma Testa is a boxer from compania, which is a region in southern Italy with a high rate of poverty and unemployment. So Testa grew up without a father and with a mother in constant economic hardship, in a social context where getting married or having children at the age of 16 is quite common. And I say that because she told me that in an interview she gave to me. When she was around 11, Testa I found Mastro Zurlo which is back then was already an experienced box trainer who brought her from the street to the gym. The point back then was not the boxing, rather than to remove her from the risk of becoming part of these dynamics we explained before. From their training after training a Boxer was born and she won the Olympic medal last year. But in this case, boxing is much more than a way to win a medal or gain popularity, which she did. But it is thanks to boxing, Emma told me in the interview that today she is able to speak proper Italian and not dialect or to enjoy reading a book. And it was to our first Mastro Zurlo that Irma told, for the first time she had fell in love with a girl. So there are many elements here that go beyond the narrative of a winning athlete and tell us about sport as a way of emancipation. Of course, Irma is an exception, because she's a huge athlete, she's worldwide known, and she has a lot of talent. And she is very capable of tell her stories on the social media, which is very important that as we said before, so all these small parts are linked in order to have a positive story. But we have to understand that not every athlete is capable of being this kind of person. And this shouldn't be the reason because an athlete get to be famous or a winner. So we have to separate all these all these elements get Irma is a case is a very positive case, she was capable of doing that, but we don't have to expect that every athlete is capable of doing that otherwise, we come back to the point one, the anxiety, the stress, which which comes after that,

Thea
of course. And I imagine I mean even even in that most positive of cases for each other, the anxiety is always going to be there just on the surface in a sense, because she may be she may be excelling. Now everything may be going very well. But we've seen it time and time again in the way things are now something could happen. And everything would change. Illicit footage, or anything. So it's never you know, it's never a static image, I suppose is what I'm saying. We should also look at Bebe Vio because she's a She's another fascinating case of someone for whom things have aligned against so many odds. She's a Paralympian, a fencer. And it's interesting because this is one of those less obvious sports I suppose we all think about football and, and basketball, but fencing is a bit more marginal, I suppose. But she's done so much to raise awareness and to make fencing visible for someone like her for in that sense for any any number of people, it becomes a possibility, I suppose. Can you talk to us a bit about her because she's, she's, she's an amazing figure.

Giorgia Bernardini
Yeah. First of all, I will I love to point out that, besides being an amazing and world wild known socialite, she is a strong fencer. And I say that because there is forget forgetting that is always there. So I start saying that she is an amazing fencer, and she has an amazing history. She won several medals in foil, at the Olympics to several gold and silver and bronze as well. Bebe started fencing at the age of five, but it was around the age of 11, that she suffered a very severe meningitis, that that's resulted in the amputation of her limbs. Despite these, she resumed her competitive for fencing activities, thanks to a special protesis, which is very interesting because she doesn't have the limbs and she performs in, in a sport where it's very important to have. Bebe Vio use top level sporting career, combine it with her activist personality has created a kind of fascination in the Italian international world. So she is kind of a star. And she's a testimonial for clothing brands. She has met many political figures like

Giorgia Bernardini
Barack Obama and she has supported campaigns which are very necessary to broaden the message of the inclusiveness of sports in general. And the Paralympic sport in particular, because we often forget about that. Many people don't know that right after the Olympics, the Paralympics are taking place. So the media as well. So every four years, we have this huge sport championship and everybody is happy about watching that or taking part in that but we too often forget about the Paralympics which are amazing as well. So I am never tired of repeating that it is on her enormous talent as a fencer that their fame is based. All the other things which we told before aren't up. So and she's also very important because she's kind of sign that there is no rhetoric in the way she presents herself to the public as a winning Paralympic athlete. So the rhetoric is most important because, for example, the Italian media tend to use this kind of rhetoric. She is a winner, even if she is Paralympic and so on. So, what I'm trying to do, what we are trying to do, a small amount of people is trying to free these kind of narrative about Paralympics from 'She's a winner even though...' and so on.

Thea
Now. That's understandable. And I mean, there's Martina Caironi another interesting case was that in mind, you talk about a small number of people kind of pushing against the weight of narrative the weight of how things have been framed and discussed before. Do you think that there is changing that you are managing to kind of recalibrate those stories?

Giorgia Bernardini
I would say yes and no at the same time. One of the most important issues in female sport is that one have to learn a lot, to study a lot in order to understand some dynamics, which are different from male sport. And all these small aspects like gender equality, equal pay and narrative about female sports are only apparently small issues. And I have the feeling that in Italy, for example, the bigger... the most important journalists, they don't want to pay attention to this way of how the narrative about female sport is changing. You cannot write or think about female sports or sports nowadays, how we did like two or three years before so everybody is changing. This is like a cultural object, like politics, like economics, like cinema, like literature, this is constantly changing. And we have to accept that in order to have a positive and correct narrative about sport. So this is my feeling.

Thea
So I suppose if we have historically the stories have been told, in terms of these women, whether because they're Paralympians, or because simply because they're women, they are where they are, they have achieved what they've achieved, because they are exceptions, they are exceptional. That is surely the most damaging, because that is how it sort of it doesn't trickle down to it, it being something that could happen, or that could be achieved by any girl or anyone, anyone whose body is different. That's presumably the biggest thing that we need to overcome this way in which we say, Oh, well, they are, they are a special case. They're not like, you know, this woman sitting next to me.

Giorgia Bernardini
but what I am never tired of saying is that female sport is just sport but played from women. So and this is really easy to understand. But this is not that easy to let the others understand it in this way.

Thea
That's the thing. It's such a simple it's such a simple observation, but the weight of everything that needs to change for people to be able to, I mean, to go back to schools, the fact that schools still don't think that it's worth letting girls play football and you know, the same things are happening here in the UK in that respect, even though the national team has performed so so well, and people really did get behind it, schools still struggle to find the funding and the support for people to translate their expectations for girls at school, and to give them those opportunities as well. How do you think it will go from here in terms of female sport in in Italy? Do you feel positive about it?

Giorgia Bernardini
The unknowns are too many, and depend on so many factors. For example, how much money will be invested in professional sports, how much of the public will follow the athletes, how the next World Cup next summer in Australia and New Zealand is going to work? How many girls will be born in the next few years, and how many of these girls will approach the sport played in the near future? So looking back, I would say steps have certainly been taken. But this is not guarantee of anything. It depends on the institution, whether they will put up with women's sports or not, it depends on those media who cover sport how we said before, whether they will do it in an exciting or flat manner, in a proper way or in a way which is old and not corresponding to the actual narrative about sports. And it depends on the athletes, whether they will be enabled to do their job in the best possible conditions or not. So there are so many unknowns. And I'd love to say yes, the future is bright, probably it is in some ways, but it's going to take a lot of time to reach the point where female sport is going to be sport, full stop.

Thea
Exactly, exactly. Well, we're having those conversations in other areas as well, just earlier this week, there was the discussion about I mean, this comes up again, and again, whether Oscar categories need to specify leading actress and leading actor and things like that it's the same thing, we just need to see it as acting, we just need to see it as sport beyond the categories and the other labels that we have historically felt the need to attach to them.

Giorgia Bernardini
Of course, one of the most important points in this kind of evolution is that female sport has to be seen in order to be recognised. And this is the point for every category you were talking about. So only if you get to be seen, you can show that what you are doing what you are performing, what you are producing, writing, thinking or composing is a product, which is valuable. That's the point. So being seen and in order to be seen, you will need money. I mean sport is entertainment, but at the very end is a job and their job is a job because you get paid for that. So money and so on. And it would be wrong to separate all these aspects one from another, because otherwise the analysis is not correct. It's only partial.

Thea
Clearly there's a long way to go, but at least we're talking about it now and we'll certainly all be watching. Giorgia Bernardini, thank you so much for talking to us today.

Thank you Thea

Giorgia Bernardini's book Velata. Hijab, sport e autodeterminazione is published by Capovolte in Italy. You'll find her podcast Goleadora in all the usual podcast places and if you want to subscribe to her newsletter Zarina you'll find that on substack. That's it for today's episode. You've been listening to the Italian files created by FILL, the Festival of Italian Literature in London and supported by the Italian Cultural Institute in London. It was produced by Emily Naylor. More from us in two weeks time.