This is a book about the journey of ideas among Italian women. Based on interviews, participant observation, and the writings produced by women in five different settings, Judith Adler Hellman traces the movement of feminism throughout Italy, from Turin and Milan, the great industrial cities of the North, to Reggio Emilia in the "red belt" of central Italy, to Verona in the deeply religious Northeast, and finally, to Caserta in the South. Following the development of Italian feminism from its origins in the turn-of-the-century Socialist Party into the 1980s, the author has gathered rich, first-hand accounts of participants that indicate the various ways that feminist thinking was received and reformulated by Italian women. In cities both large and small, cosmopolitan and provincial, Catholic and communist or socialist in their traditions, we see the impact of ideas, and the ways in which those ideas transformed and were, in turn, transformed by women acting within the constraints of their particular local social and political conditions. Hellman concludes with a broad analysis of the impact of feminism on the lives of the women she came to know, and on Italian society and politics as a whole.

Judith Adler Hellman's profile page

Judith Adler Hellman is at York University, Toronto.

"The best English-language monograph on Italian feminism available today."--Karen Beckwith, The College of Wooster

"A work that gives a full account of the richness and originality of the Italian experience while at the same time managing to provide a global perspective on women's emancipation....Through her encounter with the Italian context, and especially through her personal rapport with women there, the author has produced a remarkably sensitive social and cultural analysis."--Labour, Capital and Society

"A fascinating look at the rise, development, and (partial) decline of feminism in Italy."--American Journal of Sociology

"Well worth reading...Well written, stimulating, and can be nicely integrated into some traditional sociology courses."--Teaching Sociology

"This is a model, and therefore an excellent, book....[It] is one of the very few to conduct an actual empirical study of such a movement....Exquisitively sensitive to politics and political nuances, as well as to the effects of socio-economic structures, organizational forms, and historical political cultures...[it] is must reading for students of Italy, of feminism, of the new social movements, and of the political contemporary scene. In other words, everyone."--Canadian Journal of Political Science

"[An] extremely valuable and penetrating analysis of the developments and achievements of Italian feminism. Firmly placed in the political and economic milieu of post-WW II Italy, the book enlightens the reader not only about the roots of Italian feminism but also about the development of Italy as a modern industrialized state....For public and academic libraries at all levels."--Choice