Loredana Reppucci, one of the first women to work in IT – including for companies such as Piaggio and Olivetti – and a businesswoman herself, tells us about her life. Her successful career life – she started as an employee and ended up being a manager herself – she could fully appreciate the efforts made by women with children, both on their personal and working life. She tells us of her husband and of her passion for writing, which she used to try and increase awareness on global topic.
Vuoi ascoltare e leggere altre testimonianze? Sostieni l’archivio vivo di Lunàdigas!
LOREDANA REPPUCCI: «Well, it is a condition… a kind of blessing, from what I see in today’s society, I believe having children is a big responsibility and also a great concern. In order to escape from this kind of worries I decided not to take on the responsibility of bringing a new life into the world since that new life might not, or rather, will certainly not be what parents wish.
We made this decision together, my husband and I. The first reason was that we mainly wanted to spend time with one another, we didn’t feel the need of growing the family. Anyway, we considered the idea: “let’s try for a few years, and then we’ll see”. We decided a bit out of selfishness but also of selflessness. Selfishness because we liked our lives as they were, we liked to be free, travel, take on new professional adventures, but also out of selflessness towards this creature to bring into this world, because sometime we don’t feel totally convinced it would be a real gift.
We’re not sure if life is really a gift. Today much less than in the past, but even in my time, life was beginning to show the issues it had in store for future generations. Not only for the climate crisis, but also for the lack, the loss of ideals. When I see my friends with children I say: “Thank God I made this choice!”. I have never, ever had any regrets.
As soon as I graduated, after only a few months of teaching, which was not my long-term goal anyway, I took part in a state program using the very first computers in Italy. There were only three. The first Olivetti computers I worked with, those who saw the movie on Olivetti will know what kind of mammoth I had to work on. I, a woman, came in first out in a group of all men.
I also found a company that, strangely enough, hired a newbie, who was a woman. I worked fairly hard, I worked very hard actually; they appreciated me a lot and I was satisfied with my job. Anyway, my employers always kept an eye on what I was doing: they knew whether I went to church or not, whether or not I had gotten my confirmation before getting married, that sort of things.
Back then, if I hadn’t chosen to get married in church, if I had wanted to just get married in the town hall. I am sure my company would not have kept me.
I worked for a company that took into account my private life as well, not just that I had achieved the best score. I believe that if I said I didn’t want children it surely would not have been appreciated. I would not have held the position I had. Well, I have also been a businesswoman, so I have had many women employees and honestly, I think I have paid the price for my employees’ children; luckily I did not have children of my own.
Of course, this is a weakness of our society, a limit coming from not having facilities that can allow a mother to work even having small children.
Fortunately, I grew up in an extremely liberal family and my husband, despite being from Sicily, is very open-minded. He has always supported me in all my professional adventures, of any kind, he has never limited my actions. So I haven’t received disapproval from anyone.
My friends with kids tell me: “who do you work for, who do you do it for”, I say that out of selfishness, I work for myself and “After me, the flood”. I don’t hang out with a lot of people, I don’t usually talk to a lot of people,
however, I have no difficulty explaining my reasons.
There is a good dose of selfishness in me, I am not denying it. The selfishness of not wanting to suffer because, if what they say is true and I believe it is, a mother suffers for her children more than for herself. I don’t want to find reasons to suffer more. I guess not having a problem is better than having it. This is my selfish thought process. But it’s also selfless because I don’t want children just to show them off, telling everyone how intelligent and beautiful they are.
I don’t want to bring a new life into the world, if I know that they won’t find a just society… Not even a society like the one we lived in, which was better than this. Maybe all old people say that, but honestly, I believe that yesterday’s society was more rewarding than today’s, at least workwise…
My grandmother was a very intelligent woman, she was an artist, she was very open-minded even though she was very strict with herself. She was so used to absolute integrity and fairness, but at the same time, she had total freedom regarding her way of thinking and her life choices. I think about her all the time.
My grandmother was a playwright, some of her work was played on RAI. Things were very different for women back then. She always encouraged me to write as I seemed to show a natural flair for this.
I started writing with her in mind. I had a brother who was 13 years my junior, he was born when I was 13, I treated him like a living doll. I experienced motherhood with him, and that was more than enough for me. I thought it was nice but I didn’t want to do it again.
I’ve gotten very attached to some of my employees, they were usually very young and struggling with work. We had a very formal relationship, but I have been fair and appreciated them, they appreciated me too, we respected one another but we weren’t affectionate. Well, an affectionate kind of respect, but I certainly didn’t see them as daughters or nieces, or anything more than an employee.
Well, maybe, as you said, I might like to pass on recipes, habits, mannerisms to someone. I like that idea, but these are not tangible goods, therefore they do not have a material or monetary value. There are principles, I don’t know,
such as being careful about what you eat, eating what’s good for your health rather than what’s tasty. These are all things that were passed on to me and that I would have passed on to someone else, but, as I said, you can’t give a material price to these values.
I had the opportunity to have many different experiences in my life. I’ve seen how society and the world have changed for the worse, I have witnessed the progressive impoverishment of society. The impoverishment of minds, education, knowledge, culture. In my books, there is always an element of protest, at least in my last books there is an element of defiance against what is wrong in society.
The book’s main character expresses substantially what I think. The message I wanted to convey is somehow a hinted protest against the ways today’s life, the destruction of nature, people not being able to let others get closer anymore, people prejudiced towards someone with a different skin colour.
Well, when the book is over, so is my legacy, but I’m glad that someone appreciates these kinds of messages.
I write thrillers, but they’re not books about spies who defeat bad guys bringing justice like Rambo. No, they’re not like that; my heroes are often non-heroes, they try to change society without succeeding. I aim to encourage someone to make a change, so that they go against the tide, against all these actions, that you can’t call moral or immoral, but that are certainly detrimental for humankind. Pollution, bombs, or the way… to give women such limited importance, whereas female energy is very important in the universe, indeed, it is perhaps the strongest, despite men are thought to be tougher.
Yes, we had two cats: one we adopted by choice, and one was a gift; in both cases, we suffered a lot when both pets died, so we decided that we would never adopt pets again, to avoid this suffering. I hardly ever talk about this, it is not that important to me. I consider myself a single woman who has a great husband.»
Vuoi ascoltare e leggere altre testimonianze? Sostieni l’archivio vivo di Lunàdigas!
