ON THE EIGHTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF WOMEN WINNING THE RIGHT TO VOTE

1946: Italian women were finally granted the right to vote. The eightieth anniversary was marked by celebrations and a wide range of reenactments commemorating this near-revolution, which finally accorded women the same rights (more or less…) as male citizens.

In a publication of the Chamber of Deputies, we read these words:

“On February 1, 1945, while the war was still ongoing, the first measure extending the right to vote to women was adopted: this was a first step recognizing the “right to elect” for Italian women. […] The next step toward securing the “right to be elected” was recognized in the decree of January 1946, in preparation for the local elections held in the spring and subsequently in the autumn of that same year. As for the elections for the Constituent Assembly, a decree issued in March 1946 supplemented and integrated the existing regulations by granting the right to stand for election at the age of 25. It is an important first sign, yet the parties contesting the upcoming election for the Constituent Assembly are still fielding a rather limited number of female candidates. On June 2, 1946, Italians were called upon to choose between monarchy and republic and to elect their representatives to the Constituent Assembly. There are 226 female candidates in total: 68 on the Partito Comunista lists; 29 on the Democrazia Cristiana lists; 16 on the Partito Socialista lists; 14 on the Partito d’Azione lists; 8 on the Unione Democratica Nazionale lists; 7 on the Fronte per l’Uomo Qualunque lists; and 84 on other lists. Of the 556 elected deputies, 21 were women: 9 Comunists, 9 Christian Democrats, 2 Socialists, and 1 from the Fronte per l’Uomo Qualunque. Despite their diverse backgrounds in terms of age, culture, and political experience, these first elected women succeeded in voicing the legitimate aspirations of Italian women for emancipation during the drafting of the Constitution […] The 21 female deputies elected to the Constituent Assembly played an active role in drafting the text of the Constitution. A significant indication of this commitment can be found in the proposed amendments to the draft Constitution that they signed. Particular attention is paid to various aspects of equal opportunities; this theme is the focus of amendments to Article 48 of the draft bill (Article 51 of the final text), concerning equal access for both sexes to public office and elected positions, which have been signed by female deputies from various political groups. Despite belonging to widely divergent political forces, the women of the Constituent Assembly managed to find common ground and ways to join forces, ensuring equal rights and equal opportunities for Italian men and women in the new Constitution of democratic Italy, which entered into force on January 1, 1948.”

Aside from the purely symbolic nature of the “mothers of the constitution” group (21 out of a total of 556, or less than 4%), it takes a lot of nerve to claim that they were able to “guarantee Italian men and women equality of rights and equal opportunities.”

Granting women the vote could have been an almost revolutionary act had the bill introduced by Deputy Salvatore Morelli back in 1875 been passed, a bill bearing the title: “Abolition of domestic slavery through the legal reinstatement of women, granting women civil and political rights.” Yet, the democratic liberal parliament never even bothered to bring the bill up for discussion.

When women were granted the vote in 1945/46, the move stemmed from a concept that was anything but progressive, indeed, one might well call it conservative. The monarchy banked on the female vote to secure victory in the institutional referendum, while the reactionary Italian bourgeoisie saw it as a means of salvation from the threat of social-communism. Indeed, the slogan „In the secrecy of the polling booth, God sees you, but Stalin does not!“, along with the notices posted on church doors threatening excommunication for anyone who voted Communist, was aimed primarily at the female electorate.

But aside from these considerations, the fact that the right to vote and stand for election granted to women did not even remotely represent equality of rights between the two genders can be demonstrated by the continued existence, for decades, of laws that shamefully discriminated against and humiliated women.

We wrote in issue No. 81 of our magazine Comunismo:

«The Constitution carried over the worst outrages of the Rocco Code: Article 559, regarding the imprisonment of an “adulterous wife” for up to two years (it took two Constitutional Court rulings, No. 126 of December 19, 1968, and No. 147 of December 3, 1969, to declare this article unconstitutional); Article 587, concerning the “crime of honor,” which reduced the penalty for killing a wife, daughter, or sister “in the act of discovering her illicit carnal relationship”; and Article 544, under which a “reparatory marriage” extinguished the penalty for rape, a simple way to acquire a lifelong slave through the act of rape. The latter two were repealed in 1982 by Law 442 of 1981, thirty-three years after the Constitution came into force.» But, as the saying goes, one cannot expect to have everything all at once. The vote granted to women and the appointment of 21 “founding mothers”—now *those* were achievements to be considered “historic”!

We can discern the Communist position on women’s suffrage, or rather, on voting in general, from an article in the Communist Party of Italy’s daily newspaper; the piece dismisses the bourgeois concept of universal suffrage in favor of the opposing concept of class-based voting, and we present an extensive excerpt here.

“Women and the Right to Vote”

“The ladies who had a world map posted on the walls of Milan, highlighting the countries where women’s suffrage is the law of the land, quite naturally had the insight to place a large question mark within the geographical boundaries of Soviet Russia. The baronesses of the Italian suffragist committee evidently want an answer. Well, their Russian female friends have no right to vote in the Communist Republic. Participation in political life cannot be granted except to those who work, whether physically or intellectually, and who perform productive work. Political rights are challenged for the old parasites, grand dukes, barons, or major capitalists who have been dispossessed, or for their not-always-gracious womenfolk. Let them lament the situation and persist in their efforts within Latin countries to secure the right to vote; yet, as it happens, the struggle to win all the rights already enjoyed by men, and to raise women to that same level of dignity, has always been waged by subversive parties, [missing line] whereas constitutional parties have consistently denied women the vote, even while their speakers, whenever elections were called, have voiced a feigned sympathy for women’s political issues. It is possible that the new Chamber might discuss and approve the bill inherited from previous legislatures; we do not believe so. In any case, we could not accept the principle of extending the vote to all women. For the same reasons that make us opposed to extending the right to vote to men who live off the labor of others. All the baronesses of the suffragist committees should be excluded from any political rights. It is false that those who live within the same State thereby possess the same rights. The life and wealth of a people are the fruit of labor. If a state is strong, it owes its strength to the industriousness of the working classes, without whom life is not possible. Wherever universal employment can be achieved, universal suffrage (truly such) can be applied.”

“In Communist Russia, this goal is gradually being reached; yet universal suffrage does not yet exist, because vestiges of bourgeois rule still remain, given that a revolution is not concluded in twenty-four hours. Those who point out with foolish irony that communism has not yet been fully realized in Russia fail to grasp the laws of Marxist gradualism, and arguing with them is a waste of time. The women entitled to participate in political and administrative elections include the female worker, the peasant woman, the office worker, the housewife, and the woman whom Turati in a phrase that was both blunt and profoundly true, called the „wage-earner of love.“ 

„Let the ladies of the women’s committees for universal suffrage take no offense. Without a trace of irony, and without the slightest intention of disrespecting their integrity, we must demonstrate why they do not possess the same social rights as working-class women and prostitutes. […]“ (Il Comunista, May 19, 1921)