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DWF
donnawomanfemme
Roma, Editrice coop. UTOPIA, 1986-
A question of government, 1994, n. 22-23
EDITORIAL, A question of government, pp. 2-3
CHIURLOTTO Vania
Exceeding subjects, pp. 4-12
BOCCHETTI Alessandra
Little Zen tales on the meaning of politics, pp. 13-20
BONO Paola
The hidden question, pp. 21-24
GRAMAGLIA Mariella - SALAMON Marina - BUFFO Gloria
The pleasure of politics, pp. 25-36
CACIOLI Patrizia - MASI Paola
The paradox of communication, pp. 37-42
PUTINO Angela - FRESCURA Valeria
Equal-unequal, pp. 43-51
SALVATI Mariuccia - TONINI Carla
A life spent in teaching: Gida Rossi and "Le memorie di
una vecchia zitella", pp. 51-76
GERHARD Ute
Civil law and patriarchy, pp. 77-95
FINEMAN ALBERTSON Martha
A feminist theory of law: what difference does it make,
pp. 96-124
EDITORIAL, A question of government,
pp. 2-3
The results of the recent political elections (March 27-28), which have seen a victory of the right, have prompted a renewed debate on the meaning and the forms of politics. This issue of DWF is a contribution to this debate, both with regard to those women who have chosen to be active in institutional politics, and to those who - "a partire da sé" - privilege a different conception of political action.
CHIURLOTTO Vania, Exceeding subjects, pp. 4-12
The author reflects on and interprets the new political situation in Italy. A situation where conservative and reactionaries forces govern the country, and where there has been an increase in the number of women in Parliament - on the whole, and especially in the rightwing. This latter feature seems to contradict the traditional (or traditionally assumed) link between the left and the women's movement; such a link must therefore be re-examined, also looking at the new forms it could take.
BOCCHETTI Alessandra, Little Zen tales on the meaning of politics, pp.
13-20
The author discusses a book by Luciana Viviani, Come lottare per il comunismo senza perdere il senso dell'umorismo (Firenze: Giunti, 1994), and reads these short autobiographical stories as "exempla" which can teach us much about politics today, helping us to recognise the qualities we need in order to find again its true meaning.
BONO Paola, The hidden question, pp. 21-24
Is there a time when the exigencies of democracy call women to redefine their priorities? Ought we to experience the demise of the left in the recent elections as our own defeat? We cannot pretend that nothing has changed, but neither can we subsume our politics to the electoral results; female freedom is not a matter of votes, and the construction of female authority can and must proceed even in a political situation which might seem to put other problems in the forefront.
GRAMAGLIA Mariella - SALAMON Marina - BUFFO Gloria, The pleasure of politics,
pp. 25-36
We have asked three women, who in different ways are active in institutional politics, about their perception of the "pleasure" of politics, in relation to their personal itineraries and with regard to the present situation. What are the reasons of their choices, the obstacles they meet, the positive and negative feed-back in their lives? What are the relationships - with other women and/or with men - which structure their activity?
CACIOLI Patrizia - MASI Paola, The paradox of communication, pp. 37-42
The authors, members of DWF editorial board, look at a seemingly secondary problem, i.e. the difficulty a feminist journal often meets when asking an article to women who have achieved important positions, emancipated women who have a high awareness of their own worth and might be sympathetic towards feminism, but who are not personally active in it, not conversant with its debates.
It is a political difficulty; how can this gap be bridged, what relationship must be established in order to communicate the advantage, for such a woman, of a "gendered" reflection on and signification of her experience?
PUTINO Angela - FRESCURA Valeria, Equal-unequal, pp. 43-51
This section of the journal, named Themis, after the Greek goddess of communal living and assemblies (edited by Angela Putino in collaboration with Giovanna Borrello and Valeria Frescura) is devoted to a philosophical reflection on significant concepts and themes of feminist thought. Here the authors enter the renewed debate on the meaning of equality and difference, as well as on the meaning of politics.
Putino remembers how, as soon as, in a women's group, the sphere of intimity lost its centrality, and the questions focused on the modes of the relationships among-between the women in the group, "there the political event took place". The circle of the assembly is a void which depotentiates strength (bia) and creates a different strength (kratos) located in the common space (koinon).
Frescura reinterprets some foucaultian concepts to envisage, with Weil, a philosophical knowledge linked to the experience of human beings, and able to grasp and reformulate questions in an unprecedented way.
SALVATI Mariuccia - TONINI Carla, A life spent in teaching: Gida Rossi and
"Le memorie di una vecchia zitella", pp. 51-76
Salvati introduces Tonini. Tonini looks, also through Gida Rossi's autobiographical writing, at the life of this woman, a high-school teacher who had a role in the intellectual life of her town - Bologna - in the decades between the end of the l9th century and the beginning of the 20th.
The woman teacher is one of the figures of that contradictory emancipation which in those years was moving its first steps within the evolution of a changing Italy; looking at Gida Rossi, the author discusses "the pressures [these women] were subjected to on the part of the local and school authorities" and on the part of society in general, "the prejudices they introjected, but also their awareness of themselves and of their role or mission".
GERHARD Ute, Civil law and patriarchy, pp. 77-95
The author takes a stance in favour of "equality without assimilation" and, in the context of the current debate on law, expresses her belief in the necessity of revewing the history of law as a history of patriarchal domain and the resistance to it represented by women's social movement.
To this end she reexamines the state of the question, beginning with Enlightenment and then dwelling on the origins of the 1804 French Code civil, considered as a patriarchal reaction to the 1789-1795 revolutionary legislation. The same process can be traced in other forms in the constitution of the Prussian Civil code.
FINEMAN ALBERTSON Martha, A feminist theory of law: what difference does
it make, pp. 96-124
The essay is a historical reflection on the feminist project on law and on two
contemporary feminist juridical approaches to the historical construction of
women as "different". Obviously, feminists' first answer to the male
attitude, reducing difference to inferiority on the basis of a presumed "biological
nature", was to oppose an idea of equality grounded on the refusal to recognize
juridical relevance to any sort of difference. Recently, however, the concept
of difference has been recovered in a positive sense.
The author introduces the concept of "gender life" as social construction to support this position: the effort is to open a space in law to a female perspective as different from the male one, and, at the same time, to give women the possibility to unite - regardless of differences between them - around certain aspects of their lives.