Maria Luisa Boccia
Field of expertise: history/politics
Maria Luisa Boccia (1945) is a feminist activist and philosopher. She is currently a Professor of Political Philosophy at Siena University. She started her feminist activism in the 1964 within the communist party. She founded, together with a feminist collective, the feminist review Reti and Rosa, Quaderno di studio e di movimento sulla condizione della donna. She is author of many articles and books on women and politics and on the history of feminism in Italy.

Elda Guerra
Field of expertise: History
Elda Guerra (1949) is a feminist historian and activist. She was involved in the feminist activism within the trade unions while she organized workshops for women workers. She has been active in the “Orlando” feminist group during the 70s and 80s, in particular she co-founded the Women’s Archive and the Women’s Centre in Bologna. Most of her publication regard to the histories of women in the Resistance movement, the history of the second wave feminism in Italy, oral history projects on migrant women and young adolescents in the Bologna region.

Carmen Leccardi
Field of expertise: L abour Market/Sociology
Carmen Leccardi (1950) is a feminist sociologist. She is professor of Sociology of Culture and Coordinator of the gender equality committee at the University of Milano Bicocca. She is contributing to many European research institutes as Research Committee 34, International Sociological Association. She is also member and contributor of many sociologist reviews like Sage Time & Society, International Society for the Study of Time,Temporalités. Revue de Sciences Humaines et Sociales and others .

Giuditta Creazzo
Field of expertise: gender based violence
Giuditta Creazzo (1961) is a feminist free lance researcher, consultant and trainer on the issue of gender based violence. She has a background in juridical and criminological studies and since 1990 she is a member of the “Casa delle Donne per non subire violenza di Bologna” (the Women’s Shelter based in Bologna). She has been in charge of local research projects dealing with antiviolence centres’ data on victimised women who ask for help; with immigrant women violence and health; with multi-agency work on domestic violence. She has also coordinated three European research projects concerning women’s victims of intimate partner violence approach to the criminal justice system and concerning programmes for men who use violence in intimate relationships. She is the author of various articles and books on these topics.

Selection

Report on the selection process by the Italian FRAGEN team

Identification of the experts: we have been selecting 5 experts in the field of women studies and women’s movements. Actually all of them have expertise in researching on women and gender issues (in particular focused on the issues relevant for Quing) and they have been taken part in women’s movements in the 70s and 80s as well. At the beginning all of them agreed to join the project but unfortunately one of them was unable to participate. Their involvement was provided exclusively on a voluntary basis, so we thank them for their work and their effort!

The selection: each expert kindly provided the short lists of 10 texts. In particular we asked them to take into account their field of study and the relevant Quing issues. The dilemmas which arose in the selection process concerned the selection criteria and the nature of the texts, in particular:

The definition of “Feminist Manifesto”: it has been difficult to consider whereas a text has been written as a Manifesto or got the status afterwards.

The period of time that the project aimed to investigate: the second wave feminist texts in Italy did not always match the Quing’s relevant concerns. Gender and equality frame came late in the 90s, due more to the impact of the European policies than to the claims of the feminist movements. Most of the texts that has been relevant for the Quing issues might have been written after the – so called – “second wave feminism”.

The character of “Italian” feminism and the difficulties in representing in only ten texts the richness of positions and discussions proper of the Italian Feminisms. The need to portray this diversity let them to exclude other kind of materials, such as pictures or flyers, and to focus only on texts.

Indeed this was influenced strongly by ideas from abroad, thus one expert suggested that the texts selected should be not only Italian.

The second step was a meeting in Bologna to make the process faster. After the discussion about what should be selected, the relevant criteria and other consistent issues, more than 10 out of 40 texts had been chosen. In the last step the experts prioritised the final texts from 1 to 10.

Due to copyright constraints, we had to renounce to a part of the book: the publisher gave us the consent to publish just a small part of the book “Sputiamo su Hegel” written by Carla Lonzi, one member of the Rivolta Femminile Collective, i.e. the collective’s Manifesto which is the first statement of Carla Lonzi and the Collective itself.

We agreed that this selection is just a first step referring to the Italian Feminism and that a longer, broader and participated selection process would be necessary.

See also
website Biblioteca Italiana delle