Articles for DWF
Reviews for DWF
Articles for DWF
Debate [The women's movement and political institutions], 1977, n. 4, pp. 5-45
Mariella Gramaglia and Manuela Fraire, from the feminist movement, Margherita Repetto from the Union of Italian Women (UDI) and Giglia Tedesco, communist member of the Chamber of Deputies, were invited by New Donna Woman Femme to discuss "The Women's Movement and Political Institutions".
The failure - last June - of the abortion bill to become law was the starting point for an examination of the characteristics of the feminist movement in the light of its history, of its internal contradictions, and of its relations with the various parties of the Italian left. The sharpest differences came to light in discussing the distinction between woman's emancipation and her liberation. The continuing need, at this stage, for autonomy for the women's movement was emphasised while not overlooking the practical difficulties.
Indeed unification of the several women's groupings - especially the feminist movement as such and the Union of Italian Women (UDI), which has close links with the political parties and the trade union movement - requires a political strategy based on clearly defined priority objectives. Unity in diversity offers the only hope of overcoming the crisis of political identity presently widespread among women's group.
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Like paper-pult Madonnas, (an interview with Manuela Fraire), 1981, n. 16, pp.
54-59
It is part of some political analyses of the attitude of the Church towards the referendum promoted by the Catholic organisation "Movimento per la vita" (human life movement) with the aim of drastically restricting the current law on abortion.
The various writers - each of whom active either in the women's movement or in the feminist movement, focus on specific aspects of the problem in the attempt to understand the politics of the Church in its complexity, the Democrazia Cristiana, the party of "Catholics", the role of the Polish pope and the models of Catholic political militancy he introduces in Italy.
Margherita Repetto and Manuela Fraire analyse the relationship between the women's liberation movement and the women active in Catholic institutions, the right to reproductive freedom (which the "Movimento per la vita" wants to abolish) and indicate the differences in theory and politics between those two female realities.
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FRAIRE Manuela - CACIOLI Patrizia - GIARDINI Federica, The letter A of a
still unknown alphabet, 1999, n. 44, pp. 31-40
Cacioli and Giardini interview Fraire. The actual crisis of women's initiatives has to be related to the denial of two important issues: 1) the obstacles found in transmitting power from woman to woman, 2) the scarce capacity of dealing with conflict among women, which are two requirements for the growth of the political relationship among them.
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At the margins of the war, 2000, n. 47, pp. 39-46
Starting from a one-year discussion on and around the war inside <Balena>, the author underlines the uselessness of war and, on the contrary, the relevance of conflict. The latter exists only when there is a relationship between two separate and distinct agents (subjects). Her reasoning around the idea of conflict is built on the concept of "other" and, more generally, of "otherness".
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FRAIRE Manuela - CORSI Rita, A pleasure at risk, 2001, n. 2-3, pp. 22-30
The dialogue focuses on the issue of authority in relationships between women of different generations. According to Fraire the concept of authority is not linked to the mother-daughter model; she also remarks upon a sort of desexualisation of the woman acknowledged as her teacher by a younger woman, who at the same time enters in a relationship of obedience towards her symbolic authority.
Corsi, on the contrary, argues that on the part of younger women there is imitation rather than obedience of the older women one acknowledges as one's teachers, and thus a lack of new ideas and words.
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Reviews for DWF
MELANDRI LEA, Le passioni del corpo, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2001
rev. by Manuela Fraire, 2001, n. 50-51, pp. 86-92