Abstract

Starting from the Seventies until today, this article analyses the historical research on the relationship between women and politics in Republican Italy: it underlies both the well known women's political history difficulties - lack of continuity, isolation in regard to «general» history - and their remarkable results, which are on the contrary usually undervalued or misinterpreted. The main focus of the essay is on the peculiar use, in the Italian women's political history, of the category of «subjectivity», which refers to a conception of citizenship intertwined with the construction of the subject. According to this point of view, five different stages, in this construction, are considered, in a thematic and chronological order: women in Resistance and war, vote for women and women's rights in the Italian Constitution, women's political citizenship, women in city councils, Italian feminism of the Seventies.