Saturday, July 17, 2021

The Sexist Streets of Italy

There are roughly 16,500 streets and squares in Rome. 7,892 of those streets and squares have been named for people. The vast majority of the streets and squares which have been named for people have been named after men. 7,364 of the 7,892 streets in Rome named for people are named after men and only 528 streets have been name for women. This inequality in street naming is repeated in every one of Italy's major cities. 

Mapping Diversity is a fascinating analysis and visualization of the street names of Italy. Using Mapping Diversity you can discover how many streets in Italy's major cities are named for women compared to how many streets have been named after men. The visualization analyzes more than 40,000 streets in the main city in each of Italy’s regions. 

In Mapping Diversity's analysis of Italy's major cities only 6.6% of streets named after people have been dedicated to women. 1,626 streets in total have been named for women in all of Italy's major cities. If you exclude the streets named after female saints then the number is only 959. Of Italy's major cities Bolzano has the highest percentage of streets named for women. However even in Bolzano only 13% of streets named after people are named for women.

Using Mapping Diversity you can view dedicated maps of each main city in each of Italy's regions. On these maps you can view all the streets named for people. You can see how many of these streets named for people in each city have been named for men and how many have been after women. 

You can learn more about the methodology behind Mapping Diversity's analysis and how the maps were created on Finding gendered street names. A step-by-step walkthrough with R


Geochicas has been at the forefront of efforts around the world to reveal the under-representation of women in place-names. Their Las Calles de las Mujeres is an interactive map which reveals all the streets named for men and women in a number of cities in Spain, Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia, Cuba, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. 

A number of other interactive mapping projects have explored the sexist culture of naming streets in cities around the world: 

Street Names in Vienna visualizes all the streets named for men and women in the Austrian capital.
From Pythagoras to Amalia analyzes 5,400 Amsterdam street names - including exploring how many are named for women compared to the number named after men.
Recognizing Women with Canadian Place Names shows 500 locations in Canada which have been named for women from lots of different backgrounds. 

In Europe EqualStreetNames has carried out an analysis of the diversity of street names in a number of European cities:  

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