Lessons from a Voyage Around Women with Oriana Fallaci

AUTHOR: Niousha Mazaheri

Niousha is a trained engineer, research, and regulatory analyst who lives in Montreal, Canada. After graduating with a Master's degree in Bioresource Engineering from McGill University, she became interested in international development and conflict analysis and decided to change her career. She worked as a regulatory analyst for a year and organized meetups to discuss political and social issues while focusing on active listening. She is planning to start her Master's studies in Humanitarian Action at University College Dublin this Fall. In her spare time, she loves reading, photography, and dancing.

Here I am, utterly disappointed as I drag my feet around my favourite second-hand bookstore unable to find the only English translation of “The Useless Sex”, ironically resembling the mood of its author Oriana Fallaci throughout the book. Fallaci was born on June 29, 1929, in Florence, Italy. As a teenager, she was an assistant to her father, the leader of the underground movement against the Nazi occupation of Italy during World War II. Later on, she abandoned medical school to pursue a career in Journalism and went on to work as a special correspondent for the Italian magazine “L'Europeo” in the early 1960s. 

It was during that time that she was assigned a project to travel around the world and write on her observations of the state of the women in selected countries, specifically in the East. She chose Pakistan, India, Indonesia, China, Japan, Hawaii and the United States to visit and published the result as a collection of articles in the book “The Useless Sex” in 1964. 

Fallaci went on to work as a war correspondent in the Vietnam War and was later shot three times at a student riot in Mexico City in 1968. Her interview skills led the New Yorker to call her “one of the sharpest political interviewers in the world”. During her final years, she published a few books that raised serious concern for their Islamophobic content.

The reason I am telling you about “The Useless Sex” is to explain why you should read it and especially what you can learn from it, both on a professional and a personal level. When Fallaci decided to accept the assignment that led to this book some 60 years ago and travel to the East to learn about the lives of women, their past and projected future, she jotted down the last remaining of those cultures, some of whom were lost and forgotten over time and might never be heard of ever again. Here are a few things we can learn from her writing: 

Be conscious of your choices

The modern world promotes a fast-paced lifestyle, where you are supposed to get educated, find a job as soon as possible and take every opportunity that comes your way with little or no hesitation. The phrase “No experience is a bad experience” is thrown around constantly and breaks in your career are considered ugly remarks on your resumés. While it is true that you can learn from almost any experience, conscious choices benefit you more in the long run. Being aware of who you are, your strengths and weaknesses, as well as your values and skills, gives you the tool to set a solid foundation for your future. As you learn to be honest to yourself and others, your self-awareness paves the way through the doubt and adversity by reminding you of why you are where you are today. 

Fallaci is the symbol of self-awareness and transparency to me, to the point that she starts a book solely focused on women by saying and explaining why she does not like writing on women's issues. She then goes on to say that she rejected the assignment at first and that she is simply restarting this project to test the validity of a comment one of her friends made, which she gets back to at the end of the book. She keeps this focus throughout the book by relentlessly looking for answers and she makes no effort to hide her frustration with the roadblocks she faces. Meanwhile, she does not fail to criticize anything and anyone who dares to contradict her values and she does it without the slightest sugar-coating. 

These traits are also observed among the women she interviewed around the globe, either the ones set to conquer the world and motion a revolution, or the individuals who find their purpose in giving a helping hand to someone in need. There is a certain power associated with the consciousness that is impossible to miss, but essential to move forward. We ought to give more value to pauses, learn to take a step back, and reflect on our next step so that we can take responsibility for our actions and create a beautiful path on the way.  

Our voices matter

As individuals, we have had our unique experiences and have been raised in different cultures that take certain values to the heart, consequently shaping who we are. In reality, we are as similar to each other as we are different, and in a perfect world, we would appreciate the difference and take joy in the familiar. But as globalisation is on the rise, the lack of exposure to other cultures, the fear of the unknown, and the desperate need to protect what we value have forced us apart and created an undeniable hostility. Social media has also increased polarisation between us and has led to cyber-attacks.

Now it is more important than ever to speak up and take every chance you have to verbalize your beliefs and experiences. While words without actions can lose their value, they nonetheless provide an outlet to channel our frustration to knowledge, movements, and accountability. Whether it is your sex, gender, race, or culture that is giving you a distinctive perspective, use it to demand to be heard. We have to create acceptance with the means of education and learn to talk and listen to each other.  

Fallaci highlighted this matter in “The Useless Sex” by echoing the words she heard and giving a voice to marginalised women. The book differentiates the ones who understand the importance of thoughtful statements and individuals who do not have a grasp on the power of their words. Since the report is more of an opinion piece, you cannot miss the negative bias developing in Fallaci’s observations as she encounters the latter type. She interprets their conversations, more than not with good reason, as proof of the lack of respect they have towards women and women’s rights. Although the accuracy of her observations is questionable at points, they still provide a clear window to why words matter so much. 

Concluding Thoughts

Even if you don’t know a lot about the state of women’s rights around the world in the 1960s, I believe that “The Useless Sex” has a story to tell. The power of the book is associated with its blunt language and the portrait it paints for the reader. Fallaci did not promise any hope at the end and viewed the state of women around the world as equally disappointing and depressing. 60 years later, there is still no doubt of how far we are from an ideal world with true equality and how much work we have yet to do to get there. However, her stories are a reminder of the resilience, the relentless efforts, and the power of individuals determined to move mountains. Though the progress is slow and relative, it is still valuable and enough to change lives. 

Published 2nd August 2021

Edited by Ashvini Rae