European cities have 'sexist' street names?

A geography teacher in Rome, doing research for a cultural guide celebrating the role of women in history, realized something: more streets, nearly 46 percent, were named after men while less than four percent were named after women. The study of  teacher Maria Pia Ercolini spurred women in other parts of the world to conduct their own study on the gender balance in the naming of streets, a report of the news site British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) said. "During the research I realised that you never see traces of women. History just cancelled the women - they're not here… That’s proof of the discrimination," Ercolini said in the BBC report. Ercolini explained that they do not want to rename streets as it "would be very unpopular. We want new streets in Rome to be named after women. There are lots of new developments around the city.” To encourage women to join her cause, Ercolini put up a facebook page — Toponomastica femminile — which now has at least 2,600 members.    Ercolini and 26 other women went through a list of Rome's 16,550 streets to determine the gender balance in naming the streets.   The researchers found that 7,575 of the city's streets (or 45.7 percent) were named after men and just 580 (or 3.5 percent) of the city’s streets were named after women.

City	Number of streets	Named after men	Named after women	*No. of Filipinos living in the Country
Rome	16,550	7,575	580	Italy (123,379)
Milan	4,244	2,466	134
Florence	2,284	1,100	72
Catania	2,172	700	75
Madrid	10,500	2,800	700	Spain (52,611)
Source: Toponomastica femminile

*Based in the 2010 stock estimate of the Commission on Filipino Overseas In celebration of the International Women’s Day, two parks in Rome’s 15th district have been named after women:

• Elena Cornaro Piscopia, the first woman to earn a doctorate, and
• Laura Bassi, the first woman to teach at a European university.

Questioning the status quo Julia Long of the London Feminist Network said the women in Rome were "absolutely right to question the status quo.”   "Street names are a very important form of recognition. They are a way of immortalizing a person, and of holding in high esteem their achievements,” Long said. - VVP, GMA News