Articles for DWF
Reviews for DWF
Books reviewed by DWF
Articles for DWF
Woman's Subjection, 1975, Year I, n. 1, pp. 49-63
Woman's subjection was carefully examined in the eighteenth century by S.H.N. Linguet, an interesting and original essayist. He sought to analyse the phenomenon, and to explain how this subjection had come to be reinforced down the ages. His polemical attack on Montesquieu reveals how differently the two writers evaluate the public and private roles of women in an all-pervasive patriarchal society.
These differences are important, given that Montiesquieu's thought has profoundly influenced legislation in all western countries. Because they took different political positions, they envisaged different solutions for the emancipation of women. In Montesquieu's liberalism, this would be achieved through the gradual assimilation of women to masculine patterns. In Linguet's authoritarian democracy, on the other hand, patriarchal society and feminine freedom are seen as utterly incompatible and the need for a change in society recognised.
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A Political Historian Observations, 1976, Year I, n. 2, pp. 179-183
The political historian, Ginevra Conti Odorisio, discusses the problem of contraception and abortion within the ambit of the political-theoretical debate that has been taking place for some few years inside the feminist movement. Abortion in no way liberates woman, but we must ensure, at the political level, that the woman who, for any one of a number of reasons, is forced to abort, should no longer be punishable under the law, as has been the case in Italy up to now. Ginevra Conti is in agreement on the necessity to liberate woman from her cultural image, but she also advances the problem of an immediate political choice.
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The Theory of Matriarchy in Hobbes, 1976, Year I, n. 3, pp. 21-33
There has been widespread debate around the theory of matriarchy. Part of contemporary feminism bases its claims for women on a presumed golden age of matriarchy. Recourse to such a remote and ephemeral past to legitimise these claims is quite superfluous. The theory of matriarchy was used by Hobbes in a historical perspective for quite other ends: to woman in the state of nature is confined control over her son, in civilised society the father exercises this control.
An analysis of Hobbes' political theories brings to light many interesting aspects of his thinking: sex equality and the sex war, woman's subjection deriving from a legislative system created by men, the use of the "contract" to make legitimate the absolute power of man over woman.
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Reviews for DWF
MERFELD Mechthild, L'emancipazione della donna e la morale sessuale nella
teoria socialista, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1974
rev. by Ginevra Conti, Y. I, 1975, n. 2, pp. 205-209
Books reviewed by DWF
CONTI ODORISIO Ginevra, Famiglia e Stato nella "Repubblica" di
Jean Bodin, Torino, Giappichelli, 1999
rev. by Marisa Forcina, 1999, n. 44, pp. 88-93