The article proposes a gendered reading of Piketty’s book devoted to the history of equality. The author points out how the text devotes little space to reflecting on the inequalities that affect women and does not adopt a gender perspective capable of influencing the solutions preconized by the economist to repair the structural and conjunctural inequalities of the current world.

keywords: equality, discrimination, piketty, gender

Lavoro delle mogli, valore delle donne? (Roma 1609)
Elizabeth S. Cohen

Wives’ work, women’s value? (Rome 1609)

Women’s work, particularly that of wives, inside the households of early modern artisans is often difficult to discern. When his pregnant wife miscarried and died after a guild inspection, a Roman sweets-maker drew up a singular claim for damages that lets us study the entangled complexity of wives’ familial and productive roles. Although the monetary sums must be read not literally, but rhetorically, the sweets-maker assigned notably high values to his wife’s contributions to himself, the family, and its business.

keywords: women’s work, wives’roles, household economy, artisans, early modern

Il valore del lavoro delle donne: conflitti sulle retribuzioni nella Grande Fabrique lionese nel XVIII secolo
Anne Montenach

The value of women’s labor: Wage conflicts in Lyon’s Grande Fabrique in the 18^th century

This article addresses the question of women’s wages by focusing on the auxiliary tasks of weaving and the women who carried them out in eighteenth-century Lyon silk industry. The registers of the police des métiers, that had not been studied systematically until now, are an essential source for understanding the daily conflicts over the value of work within a productive universe marked by strong hierarchies, gender discrimination and power relationships. In addition to demonstrating that women could take such matters to court, they allow us to analyse the value attributed to the work and to the word of women by the community of masters and merchants and by the consular institutions.

keywords: lyon, eighteenth-century, silk, women, work, remuneration, litigation

The Value of Women in the Register of Wool Workers in 19th Century Rome
Alessia Lirosi

The Value of Women in the Register of Wool Workers in 19^th Century Rome

The essay tries to assess the value of women’s work in Rome during the first decades of the 19th century, by focusing on female labourers involved in wool manufacturing. This goal will be achieved thanks to the analysis of a specific document, the Registro De Lavoranti di Roma, which will be compared to other sources. Though only preliminary and partial results will be presented, the paper will make a quantification of the employees, their tasks, age, and personal status. And it will attempt to answer the following questions. What was the role attributed to these women’s work in Roman social and institutional context? What duties were they allowed to accomplish and what workspace were they permitted to enter? And how did their job affect their family status as well as domestic economy?

keywords: women, worker, workspace, wool, manufacturing, rome, agency

La defensa de la mujer contra los violadores (Aragón, siglos XVI-XVII)
Encarna Jarque Martínez

Women’s defense against rapists in Aragón (16^th and 17^th centuries)

In a legally unequal society as the one of the Ancient Regime, women enjoyed certain rights in the kingdom of Aragon, which did not exist in other territories of Spanish monarchy. One of them was rapes’ and kidnappings’ punishment. For the prosecution of these crimes there was a specific local prosecutor who had acted since 1528. This minister managed to ensure that many of crimes were not unpunished. Therefore he helped women, who were weak and unable to denounce their rapists. However, his role was limited by a society in which influential men were always defended

keywords: rape; kidnapping; woman, judicial processes, astricted attorney; local prosecutor

Il valore delle donne negli archivi della polizia di Rouen nel XVIII secolo
Lucie Guyard

The value of women in the archives of the police of Rouen in the 18^th century

The archives of the Lieutenancy General of the Rouen police in the 18th century are abundant; this article proposes to study the words spoken by women to police officers. Through these exchanges, it is possible to question the value of women’s voices in particular the power they sometimes conferred on women, and what they reveal about their place within the various spheres that made up their daily lives.

keywords: police; rouen; women; public order; social norms

Il valore delle vedove senza figli nella nobiltà francese (secoli XVII-XVIII). La forza di una posizione sociale debole
Juliette Eyméoud

The value of childless widows in the French nobility (17^th-18^th centuries). The strength of a weak social position

This article articulates the value and devaluation of childless widows from the French 17th century nobility. While the number of marriages decreased significantly in the nobility, the failure to produce descendants may have been experienced by married women as a failure to their social class. Very few childless widows remarried at the death of their husband which questions their value in the matrimonial “marketplace” and may have induced internalized devaluation. But at the same time childless widows could manage their fortune independently and in doing so they regained a high value in their birth family. Freed from obligations to their alliance family they could dispose of their property to the benefit of paternal or maternal relatives.

keywords: widows; childless; gender; lineage; patrimony

Poveri coniugi? Se una dote salva le finanze domestiche (Napoli 1900)
Maria Rosaria De Rosa

Poor spouses? If a dowry saves household finances (Naples 1900)

This essay analyses the requests for dowry release presented to the Civil Court of Naples in the early twentieth century. To reconstruct the financial strategies of the spouses in the shadow of Liberal norms, the ‘Voluntary jurisdiction’ documents are an interesting source for recording a precise moment in the economic life of the dowry capital within a family. Several cases are reconstructed in which the spouses, in agreement with each other, turn to the judge to express their needs and propose precise solutions for their survival. Thus a social and economic context emerges in which wives’ money plays a central role that lasted until the definitive abolition of the dowry regime in 1975.

keywords: dowry; marriage; credit; juridical inequality; gendered finances

Aristocratiche tra diritto e privilegio. Itinerari d’autonomia femminile nella Lombardia preunitaria
Federica Re

Noblewomen between law and privilege. Itineraries of female autonomy in pre-unitarian Lombardy

The article provides a fresh perspective on the first steps of Italian women’s path towards the achievment of a full citizenship in contemporary times: by investigating the complex relationship between noblewomen, ancient strategies of privilege and the perception of the first female rights granted in early 19th-century Italy. A remarkable vantage point on this matter is provided by the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia (1815-1859), where women’s rights emerged precociously thanks to the Hapsburg legislation. By considerating the female entourage of a Lombard aristocratic family, the Cusani Confalonieri, the present research explores both how the contact with the 1811 Austrian Civil Code generated new legal awareness in female subjects and the ways in which the dimension of privilege intertwined with it.

keywords: women’s rights; privilege; austrian civil code of 1811; restoration age; noblewomen; pre-unitarian italy; lombardy-venetia

Forum: Teoria in viaggio. bell hooks e noi a cura di Elisabetta Serafini

Traveling theory. bell hooks and us This Forum is devoted to bell hooks, the pseudonym of Gloria Jean Watkins, African-american theorist and feminist activist. The aim behind the preparation of the Forum was to seek to activate and disseminate bell hooks’ ideas in our society and in our classrooms so that they can serve as a guide towards realizing a transformative pedagogy through feminism. Discussing the possibilities of re-signifying hooks’ theories are six scholars and teachers: Lea Melandri, Livia Apa, Renata Pepicelli, Angelica Pesarini, Sara Rossetti and Rahma Nur. The authors “converse” with hooks and with each other while weaving a web of concepts that reveal the concrete intersectionality of her thought. keywords: bell hooks; feminism; intersectionality; theory as liberatory practice; teaching to transgress; transformative education; engaged pedagogy

Le verità impresentabili del femminismo di bell hooks
Lea Melandri

La forza dello sguardo
Livia Apa

Costruire l’aula universitaria come spazio di trasformazione, come spazio di felicità. Note per una pedagogia impegnata
Renata Pepicelli

bell hooks. Riflessioni dai margini
Angelica Pesarini

La (nuova) questione linguistica: rileggere bell hooks nei contesti migratori
Sara Rossetti

bell hooks: portare il suo pensiero nella scuola italiana
Rahma Nur

Orientamenti sessuali e identità di genere: una storia dell’età contemporanea
Carlo Verri

La difficile ricerca dell’equilibrio delle donne nell’Italia del boom economico
Raffaella Baritono

Amore, sofferenza, desiderio e gelosia: un affondo microstorico nell’Italia postunitaria
Carlotta Sorba

Le pagine della Sis
a cura di Vanessa Moi