Why I read women writers

A few days ago, I came across an Instagram post listing all the books read by Rory Gilmore in Gilmore Girls.

If I counted correctly, out of 339 books, only 79 were written by women (here’s the full list).

I commented that — for a show considered somewhat feminist (even if it’s from 25 years ago!) — 79 out of 339 felt a bit low. My comment received a range of replies: some agreed, others didn’t.
I respect every opinion, of course — but here, I can explain my point of view a little better.

My attitude might seem like a form of sexism — and maybe, in a way, it is (after all, the white-cis-male figure is a social construct, and yes, I try to keep it out of my life as much as I can) — but above all, it’s a conscious political stance.

Women have always struggled to be published — the first that comes to mind is Mary Shelley and her Frankenstein: she fought so much to have it published, and this true piece of art first appeared under her husband’s name. And when women did get published, their novels were often dismissed as “romance” — seen as light and unimportant simply because they dealt with emotions rather than “important” stories about men doing “important” things.

For a very long time, essential women authors were forgotten, hidden, erased.
The key point here is this: for centuries, the people holding the thread of storytelling — shaping the collective perspective — were men.

Now, I believe it’s time to rebalance that. To read books written by those who haven’t been read enough. Not because women are “better,” but because they’ve simply had fewer opportunities to be heard.

And beyond that: when we read female characters written by men, we often encounter them through the male gaze — a male perspective on what a woman should or shouldn’t be.
Of course, reading women alone isn’t enough: do our bookshelves include women of color, queer authors, disabled people, those from different classes and backgrounds?

These are, to me, essential questions. They help us widen our perspective and challenge the idea that “normality” is what a cis white man describes.

By diversifying the voices we read, we truly open ourselves to new, unfamiliar, and more authentic worlds.

With that, I’ll leave you with a question:
What book written by a woman has recently made your heart shine?

Until next time,
with love,
Virginia

In 2025, we decided to work on a very special theme: Goddesses: much of what we create were focus on exploring the feminine divine in its many forms. In this spirit, we made a project that is available on our website: The Goddess Walk Genoa.

For the first episode, we walked through the historic center of Genoa, searching for statues, images, and icons dedicated to the feminine divine, and we discussed them in a video of just under half an hour. The video aims to show how, even today—after millennia of patriarchy and Christianity— the Goddess and the feminine divine are still present in our daily lives, in this case, within the urban texture of Genoa’s historic center.

We’ll delve into the stories of:

• Tiamat, the ancient dragon goddess of the Enuma Elish, the Assyrian-Babylonian creation epic.

• Medusa, the Gorgon, and her misunderstood tale.

• Athena, her connection to Medusa, and her dual nature.

• Aphrodite, her role in mythology, and her enduring presence.

• The Virgin Mary and the lesser-known Collyridianism, an early Christian sect that venerated her as a goddess.

All of these divine figures—and many more—can be found within Genoa’s historic heart.

We created this video to show that goddesses have always been a part of our collective past. Their presence remains woven into our everyday lives, even if we don’t always notice it. Recognizing them is not only fascinating but also crucial to understanding the interconnectedness of these myths. Each goddess tells a unique story, yet they are all different expressions of the same sacred essence.

This video is available on our website, along with a downloadable PDF map, so that you, too, can follow along and discover some of the feminine divinities present in the city.

One of the topics we discuss in the video is Collyridianism—a religious movement parallel to Christianity in the 4th century CE, in which women worshiped the Virgin Mary as a deity and offered her small loaves of bread baked in ashes (just as they previously did in offerings to Inanna-Ishtar). Unfortunately, all the sources we have about this movement come from men who strongly opposed it and wrote about it in misogynistic and disrespectful terms.

As I mention in the first episode of The Goddess Walk Genoa, one such source is Epiphanius of Salamis, who, in his Panarion, speaks very negatively about these women—and women in general. Below, I have included an excerpt: it almost makes me laugh to read Epiphanius’s terrible words about women, as he sounds like a small child jealous of his more beautiful sibling. But unfortunately, this has long been the way— and, as we know, it still is in many countries and situations—men speak about women. We believe that the issue of feminine divinity is crucial to discuss, and this year, we hope to explore it in depth. It is a fundamental issue for patriarchy and patriarchal way of thinking, which is why rediscovering and remembering feminine divinities is still so important today.

That said, in a strange way, I find myself grateful to Epiphanius of Salamis for mentioning this fascinating movement (albeit in a disgraceful way), as otherwise, it would have been completely lost to history: as women’s history has often been erased, leaving us with only one side of the story—the history of only half the population.

In the video, we discuss the dragon goddess Tiamat, Medusa, Athena, Aphrodite, and, as mentioned, Mary and Collyridianism.

We are still in a patriarchal society. This is a fact. And if in some countries, where the rights of women and minorities are clearly undermined and patriarchy is more obvious, in other geographical areas such as in Europe, North America and Canada, it might be a little bit trickier to spot. But be aware that patriarchy is there, and tries to fight to keep its places of privileged. This is why even small steps are very welcome to start to walk into a direction of equality and respect.

For instance the project “Reframing Narratives: Women in Portraiture”, a project about women portrait paintings, is one of these good step that we should be happy they are being implemented nowadays.

Portrait of Virginia Woolf by Ray Strachey, dated late 1920s.

Photograph- National Portrait Gallery London:PA

Some unforeseen facts about women in the art business

Women are still today dramatically underrepresented and undervalued in term of visibility, money, prestige in gallery and museums around the world.

According to a data analysis of 18 major museums in the US they found out that their collection are 87% male and 85% white. And when we talk about the art business we don’t refer only to artist, but also to people that work in leadership position: for instance, three of the most visited museums in the world, the British Museums (founded in 1753), the Louvre (founded in 1793) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1876) never had a female person as director.

Women are the majority of art students, but the minority that actually work in the art business: we have been earning 70% of the bachelors in fine arts and between 65 to 75% of masters, but we are only 46% the people who works in art.

All these number give an idea about how has been the trend for so too long: as happens also in other fields of work and professions, women are neglected, the can have more difficulties that man to find a job in the field they have been looking forward and that they studied about and so on.

Today this is not acceptable anymore, and although to change things takes time, something is already happening.

The Art Project: How it can create enlightenment

Increasing portraits of ladies’ number within the existing collection of art 

“Reframing Narratives: Women in Portraiture” is a three-year project done in a grand collaboration between the National Portrait Art Gallery of London and the Chanel Culture Fund, a venture that aims to offer a new start to culture and in particular to contemporary artists that decreased their work due to the pandemic. The project’s objective is to give a new visibility to women within the artistic field: to increase the number of women portraits including women both as a subject of art and as artist.

This project will increase the proportion of women artists and sitters on display at the Gallery in London when it will opens again in 2023, and it will also includes a complete transformation of the entire Collection and a significant refurbishment of the building.

This is one of the initiative that have been undertaking to start close the gap between male and women in the art business, to give the right visibility, importance accessibility to the work of women as well, like it has been done to the man’s work for too long: this is a tiny step in the right direction, a direction we should start to undertake for us but especially the future generations.