Articles for DWF
Reviews for DWF
Translations 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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Our History Has Just Begun. A Comment of Sheila Rowbotham's Essay, 1980,
n. 14, pp. 75-86
The author reads Rowbotham's essay in the light of her own experience in the emancipatory women's movement in Italy, as it developed in connection with the presence of an Italian Communist Party which after World War II posed itself as a 'new party', an original political formation with new features.
She is not convinced by Rowbotham's attempt to redefine the very concept of socialism: "The task we have to face is that of creating the conditions for change; the problem, therefore, is not questioning and upsetting the modes of organisation which have historically come into being in the fight for socialism; rather, we should strive to create - criticising the present - an historically situated tool in the fight for liberation. […] Let's try and do it: our history has just begun".
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Women's movement and Catholic women's organisations, 1981, n. 16, pp. 40-53
Here we have 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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Reviews for DWF
STATHAM A. - MILLER E.M. - MANKSH H.O. (Eds), The Worth of women's Work. A Qualitative
Synthesis, State University of New York Press, 1988
rev. by Margherita Repetto, 1989, n. 9, pp. 75-80
MILLER Nancy K., Hadassah Arms
tran. by Margherita Repetto, 1998, n. 39-40, pp. 39-65