Street signs are a reflection of society. In older cities, like the European ones listed, for centuries society was male dominated. All of the famous people, both locally and nationally, were men. That a street might be named after predominantly men is not a surprise.
Looking at Rome, a very old city by anyones standards, slightly less than half the streets are named after people. I will bet the mayors wife is right. In the early centuries they named a lot of streets after famous people. Mostly men. The fact reflects the society.
An interesting study would be to narrow the scope to just the streets named since 1960.
Is the percentage named after women different than the long term trend? Break out the naming delta by decade up to the current day and see what the current trend looks like. Is there still a bias in naming or has the tide changed in recent times?
The history of the world has been, until quite recently, the history of men in the world. Men star not only in historical texts, but also on the rusty tin signs scattered across major and minor world cities.
These signs tell us where we are - what street we’re on to be exact. Whether you believe in the symbolic power of public names or you read street signs as purely semantic, one fact remains: we are usually on Mr. Smith Street and Mrs. Smith Street doesn’t exist.
In the case of Rome, geography teacher Maria Pia Ercolini is trying to do something about this cartographic gender imbalance. While writing a cultural guide to the city, celebrating the role of women in Rome’s history, Ercolini noticed something unsettling.
The research began. Rome’s 16,550 streets were meticulously analyzed for gender bias.
Ercolini and her team found that 45.7% were named after men while only 3.5% were named after women.
“Men made the history - the known history.” Ercolini noted.
The wife of the Mayor of Rome, Isabella Rauti, has joined the fight. She says the findings reflect “centuries of discrimination”.
Local authorities are now pressured to write women into the history of Rome, if only for future generations.
Do you feel street signs hold symbolic power? Who do you want honored on the map?
I’ll throw the first name out there: Ida B. Wells. If you don’t know who she was, all the more reason to name a street after her.
[via Mark Bosworth of the BBC]
Images: Toponomastica femminile; Creative Commons
