ABSTRACT
In 1946 Italian women voted for the first time. In the language of many contemporary politicians women were ‘granted’ suffrage by the new anti-fascist coalition government (rather than ‘winning’ it) as a reward for their role in the wartime Resistance. However, as Anna Rossi Doria has argued,1 the reasons for women gaining the vote were more complex and include the strategies of the major political parties at the time as well as the fact that, both in the pre-fascist Liberal period as well in the early years of the fascist regime itself, women themselves had actively campaigned for it.
