Women's day, Italian style

Inspired by the famous Italian movie with title "Divorce, Italian style" I have chosen the above title for this post. Addressing all the various forms of celeberating women's day by various Italian communities and sub-cultures is beyond the scope of this post. Some of these groups have pacifists inclinations; some are

political; some have humanitarian concerns and etc.

I will just tell you some anecdotes.

In the recent three year, I happen to be in Italy in March. In the last two years I was attending workshops. The organizers have arranged the program such that the banquet of the meeting coincided with 8th of March. In one of these meeting, most of the participants were young post-docs. The celeberation was all about having fun after a long day of attending seminars and physics discussion.

Although , 8th of March is called "women's day" but in fact men were having more fun as this naming offered them a subject and more freedom to make stupid jokes like the ones you often hear back in Iran.

The participants in last year's meeting were mostly senior people. The meeting itself was organized by an old lady.

She is a renowned experimentalist who has currently an emeritus professor position. She had been a leading figure in various experiments which some of them were ground-breaking for the

high energy community.

Women's day in this meeting was mainly about having fun, too. However, it was also considered an occasion for honoring this lady.

After dinner toasts were proposed in her honor by some old

colleagues.

The compliments were informal; instead of mentioning her many achievements in research and administrative work. They just pointed out aspects in her character which can be considered as flattery and implicit criticism: how assertive she was, how impossible it was to reject her commands as a subordinate, how quickly she pointed out the faults in work and etc. All with a joking tone! And in the end, they added that they admired her in "every respect" from the moment they first met. The emphasis was on "in every respect" that caused mock and joking protest from the audience.

O! These old people!

This is "women's day" the way it is celeberated in the international high energy physics meetings held in Italy.