Alexandra Hai

Who is Alexandra Hai?

Alexandra Hai, also known as Alex Hai, 40-year-old of German and Algerian descent, is the first female in the city of Venice, Italy who is paid to row clients around the city in a gondola. She's called “la gondoliera”, that is the feminine gender of the noun “gondoliere”: the boatman who, standing on the stern, maneuvers the only roar of the gondola; despite this, some people refuse to call her “gondolier” because she works as private gondolier and not as gondolier of the City hall.

Pioneer of a craft that is been a male preserve for centuries, in 1996 Alex Hai begun as apprentice gondolier working on the “traghetto”, the gondola ferry that carries people from one side to the other of the Grand Canal and back. She has attempted and failed the test to apply for one of the coveted and limited public gondolier licenses several times: in 1997 she failed to pass the written exam to become substitute gondolier. In 1999 she didn't pass the rowing test, that was nullified because the commission was composed exclusively by men, contrasting the Italian law D.L. 29/1993 about equal opportunity between men and women.