THE2 June 1946, eighty years ago, 12,998,131 Italian women voted both for the monarchy-republic referendum and to elect the 556 members of the Constituent Assembly.
Anna Chimenti and Maria Nataletogether with other authors including Anna Finocchiaro, make a brief excursus on this long period of achievements, small and large goals towards gender equality. The book The Constitution is Woman (Carocci) describes tenacity ed the courage of the first women elected to Montecitorio, those 21 deputies of the Constituent Assembly (9 Christian Democrats, 9 Communists, 2 Socialists, one from the Everyman).
They were only 4 percent of the 556 members of the Assembly; today, due to the so-called law on women’s quotas, they make up 30 percent of Parliament. But by declining Churchill’s famous phrase dedicated to the RAF pilots who blocked the German invasion of the United Kingdom in the skies of the English Channel, it can be said of our Constituents that “never have so many owed so much to so few”.
Aldo Cazzullo (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
Let’s think about article 3 of the Constitution: all citizens have equal social dignity and are equal without distinction of “sex”. In the documents of the Constituent Assembly we read that it was 25-year-old Teresa Mattei who insisted on introducing without distinction “of sex” and the need to remove the obstacles that “effectively limit the freedom and equality of citizens”.
“The Constitution is Woman” by Anna Chimenti and Maria Natale (Carocci publisher).
Let’s also think about article 29, equality between spouses; or article 30, on the recognition of children born out of wedlock. Not to mention the insistence with which the founding mothers fought to insert that verb: “Italy repudiates the war” – in article 11.
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All articles by Aldo Cazzullo.
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