This is the second instalment in our series of seven feature stories published in the framework of the International Women’s Day to highlight women who have succeeded in breaking stereotypes in their community also through their participation in ENI CBC Med funded projects.

Federica Ditta is an Italian woman, a product designer who graduated from the University of Palermo in industrial design back in 2016. She is 28 years old and has set up a start-up called Risacca with 2 male partners, thanks to the financial support of GIMED, an ENI CBC Med funded project.

Until she graduated, she has never felt any discrimination for being a woman, but things began to change when she started working. Her first experience was in a company, at the Research and Development department where she was the only woman. She was designing prototypes and producing them with 3D printings. After some time, she quit this job, started working by herself on product design and circular economy and moved back to her hometown, Mazara del Vallo, in Sicily.

Risacca aims at reusing and recycling waste and turn it into a new product. For instance, she works with fishermen who don’t know how to get rid of their used fishing nets, partly because of a lack of regulation on how to dispose this type of waste and also because it is costly to get rid of them. She collects those unused fishing nets and turn them into fashionable bags (‘Sacca’ means bag in Italian, this is where the name of the company comes from).


The Risacca team: Federica with Carlo Roccafiorita and Cristiano Pesca (photos courtesy of Risacca © Davide Casciolo for MIND)

Subtle discrimination and lack of credibility

Federica perfectly described the type of discrimination she experiences; it is an insidious discrimination. In Italy, she says, there is no written law forbidding women of doing certain jobs, but men make you feel that as a woman, you are not good enough to do some specific jobs. How many times did she attend fairs in industrial design and people would tell her they want to talk to the technician and how surprise they are when they realise that she is the technician. 

“In Italy we don’t have any law that says women cannot do something or go anywhere but, in this case, discrimination is insidious”

Federica Ditta

This also happens when she goes to the hardware store and asks for specific equipment or when she had to buy some machineries. Men would gently adapt the language so that she can understand the details of the machineries and again will be astonished to see that she can perfectly speak their language as she had already worked with this type of machineries. Most of the time, men do not realise that they are discriminating.

Increase the credibility to break some barriers

Federica is young and so are her two partners in Risacca. Being selected and winning the sub-grant from GIMED project helped them a lot in gaining more credibility in front of investors and more experienced entrepreneurs.This credibility that you so badly needed when you are young and a woman to prove yourself.

“Little girls have no representation of women who could be powerful figures like a woman politician or engineer.”

Federica Ditta

And now, what’s next to remove these barriers?

Girls need more examples of women surrounding them who are engineers, scientists, politicians. If they lack references like that, how can they imagine themselves working in these areas?

But women also need to talk to men, explain to them so that they realise what girls are experiencing as they are not fully aware of these discriminations. Federica realised she was facing obstacles when she started following some girls on Instagram who would share their experiences and would recognise herself in these examples. It takes some time to Federica to realise that, so how can we expect men to understand it if they don´t put our dresses. 

Privilege is not something you can see but it deletes obstacles in reaching your goals. If men picture themselves with no privilege, they may better understand women who have to face these unjustified inequalities. 


The Risacca bag: circular, hand-made and sustainable ((photos courtesy of Risacca)