elisa moioli

You work in the business development of renewable energies-related technologies, for one of the biggest energy companies in the world. You’re working in power plants, contributing to carbon phase-out.You’re an energy engineer, you’ve been studying in Rome, Denmark, Netherland, France.You like your job, you’re passionate, you believe in what you do, you’re proud.

You get to work today, you have to meet a group of external suppliers and explain to them what they will have to do. You shake hands, people introduce themselves, “Engineer A”, “Engineer B”, “Head of C”... and your colleague introduce you to the group: “She’s Miss Elisa, she’s very nice and kind so it’s always a pleasure to see her around...”

Pause.

What’s up now? Do you point out that you’re “Engineer D” “Project manager of X”? Do you get mad, do you let it go?
His sentence was deeply, sincerely and innocently offensive, but do we really need to say something about that? Would he change his mind, or would it just draw you as a fussy sour girl?

You bet on the second, you let it go. You keep your thoughts for the night when you’re out for a beer with a friend and you can just blow off steam. But that ends up with your friend saying “Oh come on, why do you care? Forget it! It was a compliment! Do you need that person recognition, really?”

It was a compliment, actually.
You know what you are, apart from nice and kind, actually. For sure you don’t need any recognition from a twice-seen colleague, actually.
Everything’s true. But you were working, you weren’t there as the winner of a Smiling Contest. You were there as an Engineer, exactly like the others. But everybody got their title, while you got a Miss and a physical appreciation you really didn’t care about.

That’s it.
That’s a stupid moment which lasts one second, a couple of tiny words. You’d really forget it cause it matters zero, but in these moments you sum them all.
You sum your 50-years-old boss telling a colleague that another female one “might be good at doing something else but surely not her job”, or the 43-years-old boss of your boss organizing a team soccer match by saying “we’d have two pink quotes but we can equip ourselves without”. You sum the 100% male managers in your company, apart from the marketing or communication department. You sum up all the times you’ve been doing analysis and studies, and then the audience listened only to your male colleague. You sum all the professors who have been judging you for something other than your competences. You sum your first job interview when the boss started the conversation saying “You have two beautiful tits, I’ve got a 19 centimeters longpenis”. And you sum your friend commenting “Come on, did you expect he was really calling you for a job?”. You sum all the managers you’ve seen never hiring women. You sum all the suggestions you received about being patient with your boyfriend cause “There’s always a great woman behind a great man”. You sum all the cops stopping you and asking where are you going all alone.

You can go on summing up so many little useless moments, you might never get to an end. So despite each one of them had zero weight, their sum gets huge on your small shoulders.

This is a daily fight. It’s a millenary social structure you’re fighting. It’s older than you are. It’s greater than you are. You have to fight every little battle, find people who fight your side, and ask the others to do the same. That’s being a woman in a man-ruled world. It’s a lot about fighting. It’s a fighting routine.

Well, now that you have your feet into my woman's shoes, I can introduce myself.
Ciao.
I am Elisa, I’m 29 years old, born in Rome. I am a snowboarder, bike addicted, civil protection volunteer, I’m a big, big, dreamer, and activist of a human race able to protect the world where it lives, and I like contributing with my daily job.
I like discovering and learning, at the time it’s mostly sailing and improvisation turn, but I can get excited for the basics of finance as well.
I never perceive myself different from most of the people I meet during my professional, neither personal life, I might not live in the most girlish environment ever, but I only realize it when my male friends ask me to introduce them some female ones, and I notice I can count them on a hand. I don’t feel like taking decisions in my daily life as a woman instead of just Elisa, but I do feel very woman.
Being a woman means freedom to me. I’m always completely free to let me being crossed and shocked by strong emotions, wherever they come from, and transmit them back in the way I feel like, to whoever I feel like. It means I can hug, and I can ask for a hug. It means I never need to contain myself if I want to show somebody that I love her/him/it.
Great deal for me, thanks mum, thanks, dad.

So let’s put together the two things. As my woman nature is fighting, as my woman-Elisa nature is freedom, being strong for me means fighting every day, but also, sometimes, means not to.
It is conceding myself not to fight every little battle I see passing by. It’s forgiving somebody when he/she is not fighting by my side the way I would like to. It’s fighting when and how I actually feel like. Because it’s a fighting routine, sometimes being strong means to me leaving arms and armors home and let the others fight. It’s flying light despite that huge mass weighing on my shoulders.
It’s allowing myself to smile and let it go, sometimes.

It means to breathe, rise my head, and remember that the “nice and kind” introduction of my colleague didn’t say anything about me.
A lot about him, though.