ABSTRACT
In 1865, the introduction of a new civil code in the Italian Kingdom consolidated women’s dependence on men. Wives needed their husband’s authorization both to handle their own property autonomously and to allow them to trade. Women on the whole were hindered from practising liberal professions and they had no free access to secondary schooling.1 However, as an equitable inheritance system was in force and sons and daughters had the same rights to their parents’ property,2 women’s proprietorship was neither occasional nor trifling at the time. This is why the chapter aims to provide evidence about the economic position of women in nineteenth-century Italy, especially concerning the amount and kind of financial assets they held.
