The Italian Republic and votes for women

The story

After the war, a choice

In the spring of 1945 the war ended, and Italy faced a big question: what kind of state did it want? For almost a century, since 1861, Italy had been a monarchy, ruled by the House of Savoy. But many Italians could not forgive King Victor Emmanuel III for backing Fascism for twenty years, for signing the racial laws and for fleeing on 8 September 1943, leaving the country in chaos. On 9 May 1946 the king abdicated in favour of his son, Umberto II, hoping to save the monarchy. But the decision belonged to the people.

The government, led by Alcide De Gasperi, decided to hold a referendum on 2 June 1946: Italians would choose between monarchy and republic. On the same day they would also elect a Constituent Assembly, given the job of writing the new Constitution.

Votes for women

Until then, in Italy, only men voted, and not even all of them: in 1912 the vote had been extended to almost all men over the age of majority. Women were excluded. For decades, in many countries, women had been demanding the right to vote: New Zealand had been the first, in 1893; Britain had granted it in 1918 (with limits) and the United States in 1920; France in 1944. In Italy women had been talking about it since the 19th century, but governments, even Fascist ones, had always refused.

During the Resistance, hundreds of thousands of women had taken part in the struggle and shown their courage: it would have been unthinkable to go on excluding them. On 1 February 1945, with a decree based on a proposal by De Gasperi and Palmiro Togliatti, women's right to vote was recognised. A second decree, of 10 March 1946, laid down that they could also be elected. On 10 March 1946, in the local elections of some cities, Italian women went to vote for the first time in history.

2 and 3 June 1946

On 2 June 1946, and the day after, almost all Italians, men and women, went to the polls: nearly 90 per cent of those entitled to vote did so. Voters queued outside the polling stations in schools, ballot paper in hand, often in their Sunday best. For many women it was the first time they had entered a voting booth: they would remember it as a moment of joy and pride.

On the referendum ballot papers there were two symbols: the turreted head of Italy, for the Republic, and the Savoy coat of arms, for the monarchy. In the end, the Republic got about twelve million seven hundred thousand votes, and the monarchy about ten million seven hundred thousand: 54 per cent against 46. The result was much disputed, especially in the south, where the monarchy won, and only on 18 June did the Court of Cassation proclaim the outcome definitively. On 13 June Umberto II had already left Italy for Portugal, to avoid a conflict, urging everyone to accept the verdict.

The “founding mothers”

In the same elections Italians chose the 556 members of the Constituent Assembly: among them, for the first time, were twenty-one women, who went down in history as the “founding mothers” (madri costituenti). They belonged to different parties: Communists, Christian Democrats, Socialists, one from the Common Man Front. Among them were Nilde Iotti, Teresa Noce, Lina Merlin and Maria Federici. The youngest was Teresa Mattei, aged twenty-five, who proposed giving mimosa flowers to women on 8 March. Five of them joined the small committee that prepared the text of the Constitution.

On 25 June the Assembly met for the first time in Rome. On 28 June it chose Enrico De Nicola, a lawyer from Naples, as provisional head of state. Italy was officially a Republic.