The Comitato pro suffragio femminile (Committee for Women's Suffrage) was an Italian organization founded in 1905 in support of women's voting rights. [1] Among the most active participants were Anna Maria Mozzoni, Linda Malnati and Carlotta Clerici. [2]
It was the first organization for women's suffrage in Italy, as well as one of the first national feminist organizations in Italy after the Lega promotrice degli interessi femminili.
Established in Rome, the Committee was affiliated to the International Women Suffrage Alliance. As such, it was independent of any political or religious preferences. Its principal objectives were to promote, defend and support the women's suffrage movement; to become the focus of action by regional committees; to set up committees in cities where they were absent; and to unite Italian women fighting for voting rights, exploring all legal avenues for obtaining the right for them to vote. [3]
In 1906, on behalf of the committee, Mozzoni presented a petition to the Italian Parliament inviting the deputies to discuss granting voting rights to women. While sensitizing parliamentarians to the issue, it was also effective in forming a basis for discussion by women throughout the country. [4] In order to avoid being associated with the British suffragists, whose methods acted as repulsive to Italian men, the Italian suffragists had a policy to act in a more discreet manner, since it was considered necessary to achieve the goal. The suffrage movement in Italy was quite small compared to its British equivalent.
In 1922, Benito Mussolini gave a promise to Comitato pro suffragio femminile to introduce women's suffrage. Municipal women's suffrage was legalized in 1925, but suffrage on both municipal and national level became powerless after the introduction of Fascist Dictatorship in 1926, and it was not until after the war in 1945 that national women's suffrage was finally enacted. [5]
Anna Maria Mozzoni is commonly held as the founder of the woman's movement in Italy. One of the roles she is most known for is her pivotal involvement in gaining woman's suffrage in Italy.
Atletico Roma Football Club was an Italian football club based in Rome, Italy. The club was founded as Nuova Tor Sapienza Calcio, which was renamed to Cisco Tor Sapienza in 1998. Under several merger, the club was subsequent known as A.S. Cisco Collatino, A.S. Cisco Calcio Roma and A.S. Cisco Lodigiani (2004–05). The club also played in Serie C from 2005 to 2011. In 2010–11 season the club was known as Atletico Roma F.C.. Several clubs were founded as namesakes to homage either Atletico Roma or Cisco Collatino after 2010 and 2011, the year of disestablishment of the original Cisco Roma and Atletico Roma respectively.
Anna Kuliscioff was a Russian-born Italian revolutionary, a prominent feminist, an anarchist influenced by Mikhail Bakunin, and eventually a Marxist socialist militant. She was mainly active in Italy, where she was one of the first women to graduate in medicine.
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Emma Baeri is a Sicilian feminist historian and essayist. She has played an active role in organizing feminist political action and literary life in Italy along with her academic career.
Bruna Bertolini was an Italian female basketball player, shot putter, discus thrower and long jumper, who won thirteen national championships at individual senior level from 1928 to 1937 in three different specialities, and gold medal at the EuroBasket Women 1938.
Margherita Ancona was an Italian teacher and active in the women's suffrage movement in Milan. She was the secretary and later president of the radical bourgeois Comitato lombardo pro suffragio and member of the Italian branch of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA). One of the leaders of the Italian women's suffrage campaigns, she was the only Italian woman to serve in her era on the board of the IWSA and was as a delegate to the Inter-Allied Women's Conference of 1919.
Alice Schiavoni Bosio was an Italian suffragette. She served as the director of the journal Attività Femminile Sociale from its founding in 1913 through 1916. Affiliated with the Consiglio Nazionale delle Donne Italiane, a member of the International Council of Women, Schiavoni was one of the participants in both the Women at the Hague Conference of 1915 and the Inter-Allied Women's Conference of 1919.
The Associazione per la donna, also Associazione Nazionale per la donna, was an early Italian women's organization. Founded in Rome in 1896 by a group of women, including Elisa Agnini, Giacinta Martini Marescotti, Alina Albani, Virginia Nathan, Maria Montessori and Eva De Vincentiis, it was among the first to deal with women's civic and political rights. The organization published several papers including an informative pamphlet titled L'oppressione legale della donna in which articles of law were examined and explained for the benefit of women. In particular, attention was given to laws regulating family relationships.
The Consiglio Nazionale delle Donne Italiane (CNDI) or National Council of Italian Women is an Italian federation of women's associations, including those admitting both men and women, bent on improving conditions for women. Founded in 1903 as the Italian branch of the International Council of Women, it originally brought together organizations from federations representing Rome, Lombardy and Piedmont and was chaired by Gabriella Rasponi Spalletti until her death in 1931. From the beginning, the council has been open to all women, irrespective of their political or religious views. Still active today, it is involved in helping with the establishment of women's cooperatives, educating illiterate women, assisting migrants and developing the role of women in the professions. It also combats prostitution and the trafficking of women.
Elisa Agnini Lollini was a pioneering Italian feminist, pacifist, suffragist and politician. In 1896, she was a co-founder of the Associazione per la Donna which not only supported women's civic and political rights but called for the withdrawal of Italian troops from Africa. A member of the Comitato Pro Suffragio, in 1910 she urged the socialist party to support votes for women. She also fought for improved women's rights, especially in the areas of education, divorce, equal pay, and working conditions.
Linda Malnati (1855–1921) was an influential Italian women's rights activist, trade unionist, suffragist, pacifist and educator. She is remembered for her efforts to improve the working conditions of teachers from the 1890s, for her contributions to magazines calling for improved conditions for working women and, in the 1900s, for her support for votes for women. She was an active member of various women's organizations.
Graziella Sonnino Carpi was an Italian feminist and peace activist in the interwar period. She was a member of the Italian Unione Femminile Nazionale and a delegate to the 1919 Women's Conference.
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Whatever I've done, it's been conceived within women's relations, in presence of women's bodies and in the flowing of awakened women's emotions.
Eugenia Rasponi was an Italian noblewoman who became a suffragist and businessperson. Dedicated to social welfare projects, as her mother had been, she opened a furniture manufacturing business to preserve the local hand-crafted canvases made in Romagna. In 1918, she met openly-lesbian writer and suffragist, Lina Poletti. The two women would share their lives for the next 40 years, traveling throughout Europe and Asia and studying philosophy and theosophy.
Lega promotrice degli interessi femminili was an Italian organization for women's rights, founded in 1880. It was the first organization for women's right in Italy.
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