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Bocconi among the universities that have joined the Interuniversity Centre for Gender Cultures to promote a different vision of feminine identity

A long gestation that is finally taking a more concrete shape: the Interuniversity Centre for Gender Cultures, born from the collaboration of all the seven universities of Milan, has just been ratified by Bocconi's Academic Council.

"The project", says Paola Dubini, director of the bachelor of Economics and Management in Arts, Culture and Communication (Cleacc) and Bocconi's reference for the Centre, "is the result of the common decision of all universities of Milan, both public and private, to create a network in order to protect the new gender cultures that express the need for women's autonomy and self-determination". "Main objective of the project", continues professor Dubini, who is also the coordinator of Bocconi's Committee on Equal Opportunities, "is to question the crystallized gender identity that is too often associated with female imagery, especially in our country, and to preserve women's identity from reductive stereotypes".

With the constitution of this Centre, the universities of Milan work together for the promotion of the analysis, research and reflections, both theoretical and empirical, in order to bring to the surface women's need for the recognition of their merit and competences and to spread these results publicly to upgrade what appears to be a limited and reductive perception of women's identity.

"Each university will organize some events in rotation", professor Dubini explains; "at Bocconi, for example, the project has seen the engagement of groups of students who, under the coordination of professor Stefania Borghini, have tackled the issue of feminine stereotypes in the field of tv advertising, starting from the famous educational documentary The women's body, that aroused a big echo a few years ago denouncing Italian television's habit of proposing a unique feminine model, the showgirl".

"The value of this Centre", concludes professor Dubini, "lies in the close partnership among all the universities, that raise the issue of women's representation and make demands for a greater recognition of feminine dignity and competences unified in a common front towards various institutional interlocutors, from the Municipality of Milan to state tv RAI".

Besides Università Bocconi, the other universities that join the project are Università Bicocca, the first to host the Centre, Università degli Studi di Milano, Politecnico di Milano, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Università IULM and Università San Raffaele.

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