Women in Italy refers to women who are from (or reside in) Italy. The legal and social status of Italian women has undergone rapid transformation in recent decades. This includes family laws, the enactment of anti-discrimination measures, and reforms to the penal code (particularly regarding crimes of violence against women).
History Women in Etruscan society
The Etruscan civilization was an ancient civilization of people inhabiting Etruria (most of modern-day Tuscany, northern Lazio, and northwestern Umbria) in ancient Italy. The Etruscans had a common language and culture; they formed a federation of city-states.
Women were respected in Etruscan society more than their ancient Greek and Roman counterparts. Today only the status of aristocratic women is known because no documentation survives about women in other social classes. Etruscan women were politically important and dominant in family and social life. Their status in Etruscan civilization differed from their Greek and the Roman peers, who were considered to be marginal and secondary in relation to men.
Women's roles and images evolved during the Etruscan period. Affluent women were well-groomed and led family lives within society, where their role mattered politically and administratively. Tanaquil and were among the women who played leading roles in Etruscan politics. In the final phase of Etruscan history, women lost much of their independence amidst conquest by the Roman Republic, and their status became that of Roman women.
Women in ancient Rome
Freeborn women in ancient Rome were citizens (cives),The form of Roman marriage called conubium, for instance, requires that both spouses be citizens; like men from towns granted civitas sine suffragio, women (at least those eligible for conubium) were citizens without suffrage. A mother's legal status as a citizen affected her son's citizenship. All Roman citizens recognized as such by law did not hold equal rights and privileges, particularly in regard to holding high office. See A Casebook on Roman Family Law following, and A.N. Sherwin-White, Roman Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 211 and 268 (on male citizenship as it relates to marrying citizen women) et passim. ("children born of two Roman citizens") indicates that a Roman woman was regarded as having citizen status, in specific contrast to a peregrina. but could not vote or hold political office.Bruce W. Frier and Thomas A.J. McGinn, A Casebook on Roman Family Law (Oxford University Press: American Philological Association, 2004), pp. 31–32, 457, et passim. Because of their limited public role, women are named less frequently than men by Roman historians. But while Roman women held no direct political power, those from wealthy or powerful families could and did exert influence through private negotiations.Kristina Milnor, "Women in Roman Historiography," in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 278; Ann Ellis Hanson, "The Restructuring of Female Physiology at Rome," in Les écoles médicales à Rome: Actes du 2ème Colloque international sur les textes médicaux latins antiques, Lausanne, septembre 1986 (Université de Nantes, 1991), p. 256. Exceptional women who left an undeniable mark on history include Lucretia and Claudia Quinta, whose stories took on mythic significance; fierce Republican-era women such as Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, and Fulvia, who commanded an army and issued coins bearing her image; women of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, most prominently Livia (58 BC-AD 29) and Agrippina the Younger (15 AD-59 AD), who contributed to the formation of Imperial mores; and the empress Helena (250–330 AD), a driving force in promoting Christianity.Unless otherwise noted, this introductory overview is based on Beryl Rawson, "Finding Roman Women," in A Companion to the Roman Republic (Blackwell, 2010), p. 325.
As with male members of society, elite women and their politically significant deeds eclipse those of lower-status women in the historical record. Inscriptions and especially epitaphs document the names of a wide range of women throughout the Roman Empire, but often tell little else about them. Some vivid snapshots of daily life are preserved in Latin literary genres such as comedy, satire, and poetry. The poems of Catullus and Ovid include women in Roman dining rooms, at sporting and theatrical events, shopping, putting on makeup, practicing magic, worrying about pregnancy — all, however, through male eyes.Kelly Olson, "The Appearance of the Young Roman Girl," in Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture (University of Toronto Press, 2008), p. 139. The published letters of Cicero show his interactions with his wife Terentia and daughter Tullia, and his speeches disparage the various ways Roman women could enjoy a free-spirited sexual and social life.In reference to his character assassination of the notorious Clodia; see Pro Caelio.
The one major public role reserved solely for women was in religion: the priestly office of the Vestals. Forbidden from marriage or sex for a period of thirty years, the Vestals devoted themselves to the study and correct observance of rituals which were deemed necessary for the security and survival of Rome but which could not be performed by the male colleges of priests.For an extensive modern consideration of the Vestals, see Ariadne Staples, From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion (Routledge, 1998).
Women in Pre-modern Italy
During the Middle Ages, Italian women were considered to have very few social powers and resources, although some women inherited ruling positions from their fathers (such in the case of Matilde of Canossa). Educated women could find opportunities of leadership only in religious convents (such as Clare of Assisi and Catherine of Siena).
The Renaissance (15th–16th centuries) challenged conventional customs from the Medieval period. Women were still confined to the roles of "monaca, moglie, serva, cortigiana" ("nun, wife, servant, courtesan").Sara F. Matthews-Grieco (a cura di), Monaca, moglie, serva, cortigiana: vita e immagine delle donne tra Rinascimento e Controriforma (Firenze: Morgana, 2001). However, literacy spread among upper-class women in Italy and a growing number of them stepped out into the secular intellectual circles. Venetian-born Christine de Pizan wrote The City of Ladies in 1404, and in it she described women's gender as having no innate inferiority to men's, although being born to serve the other sex. Some women were able to gain an education on their own, or received tutoring from their father or husband.
Lucrezia Tornabuoni in Florence; Veronica Gambara at Correggio; Veronica Franco and Moderata Fonte in Venice; and Vittoria Colonna in Rome were among the renowned women intellectuals of the time. Laura Terracina of Naples was the most published Italian poet of the 16th century. Powerful women rulers of the Italian Renaissance, such as Isabella d'Este, Catherine de' Medici, or Lucrezia Borgia, combined political skill with cultural interests and patronage. Unlike her peers, Isabella di Morra (an important poet of the time) was kept a virtual prisoner in her own castle and her tragic life makes her a symbol of female oppression.Gaetana Marrone, Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies: A-J, Taylor & Francis, 2007, p. 1242
By the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Italian women intellectuals were embraced by contemporary culture as learned daughters, wives, mothers, and equal partners in their household.Ross, Sarah Gwyneth (2010). The Birth of Feminism: woman as intellect in Renaissance Italy and England. Harvard University Press. p. 2. Among them were composers Francesca Caccini and Leonora Baroni, and painter Artemisia Gentileschi. Outside the family setting, Italian women continued to find opportunities in the convent, and now increasingly also as singers in the theatre (Anna Renzi—described as the first diva in the history of opera—and Barbara Strozzi are two examples). In 1678, Elena Cornaro Piscopia was the first woman in Italy to receive an academical degree, in philosophy, from the University of Padua.
In the 18th-century, the Enlightenment offered for the first time to Italian women (such as Laura Bassi, Cristina Roccati, Anna Morandi Manzolini, and Maria Gaetana Agnesi) the possibility to engage in the fields of science and mathematics. Italian sopranos and prime donne continued to be famous all around Europe, such as Vittoria Tesi, Caterina Gabrielli, Lucrezia Aguiari, and Faustina Bordoni. Other notable women of the period include painter Rosalba Carriera and composer Maria Margherita Grimani.
Women of the Risorgimento The Napoleonic Age and the Italian Risorgimento offered for the first time to Italian women the opportunity to be politically engaged.Antonietta Drago, Donne e amori del Risorgimento (Milano, Palazzi, 1960). In 1799 in Naples, poet Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel was executed as one of the protagonists of the short-lived Parthenopean Republic. In the early 19th century, some of the most influential salons where Italian patriots, revolutionaries, and intellectuals were meeting were run by women, such as Bianca Milesi Mojon, Clara Maffei, Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso, and Antonietta De Pace. Some women even distinguished themselves in the battlefield, such as Anita Garibaldi (the wife of Giuseppe Garibaldi), Rosalia Montmasson (the only woman to have joined the Expedition of the Thousand), Giuseppina Vadalà, who along with her sister Paolina led an anti-Bourbon revolt in Messina in 1848, and Giuseppa Bolognara Calcagno, who fought as a soldier in Garibaldi's liberation of Sicily.
The Kingdom of Italy (1861–1925)
Between 1861 and 1925, women were not permitted to vote in the new Italian state. In 1864, Anna Maria Mozzoni triggered a widespread women's movement in Italy, through the publication of Woman and her social relationships on the occasion of the revision of the Italian Civil Code (La donna e i suoi rapporti sociali in occasione della revisione del codice italiano). In 1868, Alaide Gualberta Beccari began publishing the journal "Women" in Padua. In the late 19th-century, the women's movement organized to campaign for women's rights, such as the Lega promotrice degli interessi femminili in 1880 and the Associazione per la donna in 1896.
A growing percentage of young women were now employed in factories, but were excluded from political life and were particularly exploited. Under the influence of socialist leaders, such as Anna Kuliscioff, women became active in the constitution of the first Labour Unions. In 1902, the first law to protect the labour of women and children was approved and limited women to twelve hours of work per day.
By the 1880s, women were making inroads into higher education. In 1877, Ernestina Puritz Manasse-Paper was the first woman to receive a university degree in modern Italy, in medicine, and in 1907 Rina Monti became the first female department chair and full professor in an Italian University.
The most famous women of the time were actresses Eleonora Duse, Lyda Borelli, and Francesca Bertini; writers Matilde Serao, Sibilla Aleramo, Carolina Invernizio, and Grazia Deledda (who won the 1926 Nobel Prize in Literature); sopranos Luisa Tetrazzini and Lina Cavalieri; and educator Maria Montessori.
Montessori was Italy's first female physician and developed the Montessori education method, which is still in use today. She was part of Italy's change to further give women rights, and she was an influence to educators in Italy and around the globe.
Under the Fascist regime (1925–1945)
Women's rights suffered a setback under the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini, with fascist ideology dictating procreation as a woman's duty.Victoria De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (Berkeley : University of California Press. 1993)