1968-79. Feminism and the Italian Party System: Women's Politics in a Decade of Turmoil

Historically, protest, understood as an autonomous mobilization that confronts the principal actors of systems, has been an infrequent avenue for women. Yet in the late 1960s and early 1970s a new wave of feminism swept over the Western world, often assuming the characteristics of autonomous movements and gathering strength especially in countries like Italy, where other forceful opposition movements had developed. This paper will attempt to examine the factors that affected the emergence and evolution of the Italian feminist movement, exploring the movement's internal development as well as its interaction with, and dependence on, external forces. The feminist movement gained impetus, coming to form a body, from the widespread mobilization that the students' (1968) and workers' (1969) rebellions gave rise to in Italy. Throughout the principal phases of its growth, until 1976, the mainstream' of this movement combined its focus on the transformation of female identity and of male-female relations with a highly political character, not only turning a great deal of its attention to the nexus between the liberation of women and the transformation of