R: I have graduated from (School1), I studied for a turner. After that I had to start working, three years, then there were three years you had to work for sure, after you have graduated from (School1), and they told you where to work.
R: For me, my vocation for nursing was, is crucial since it leads me to be with people, open myself, take care of people, devote totally myself to people. So I feel absolutely fulfilled. And I don’t feel…To me, not to have had children has never been a problem, to say ‘what a frustration’.
R: In small villages in that area (a region in Southern Italy) everybody’s opinion was that only boys would have studied as they were supposed to earn money for their families while girls were to be married as soon as possible as after being 20 years old they were considered too old to find a husban
R: A lot of stereotypes, but one of the key, which is in fact has a valid base is that girls are much dutiful, especially in terms of education. To say it straightforwardly, girls use to learn everything by heart. This stereotype is really true (...).
I: I wanted to ask you to tell me about such situations in your life, in which the fact that you are a man played a role.
R: (Name son) is my son. He’s not very good at sports, he doesn’t have enough strength, and he also has a slight cardiac insufficiency and it’s not a fake diagnosis. I’ve seen there is a trend, especially among little girls, to get exemptions from sports, from cardiologists.<br />(…)
R: (...) This is an example I had probably not thought about if it hadn't been for my wife...<br />[…]
R: In the school at a young age I was very boyish because I used to play football, I used to go camping, I climbed fences, I used to go everywhere... Boys had always been in my company, not girls. I had shared one school desk with a boy for a long time.
R: Last summer, we were travelling to the seaside, and there were people from the whole country, not from the big cities, but from the countryside.
R: (…) when I was little, towards the end of primary school, and secondary school, since my parents where farmers, many times if not all times, the two boys of the family, my brother and I had to go to the fields and help them.
R: I was something like 16 or 17 years old, when I started to visit the French institute and there I discovered kind of ‘real world’s visions’, I mean, opinions and concepts that went beyond the Czech context, where the roles of women and men are quite sharply defined – at least, that’s how I though
R: Well, yes… the work…Here it is the role in the relationship, which perhaps my wife does not even expect from me, but I still feel it quite a lot that practically I should perform well and support the family, so like… it feels all depends on me.