ABSTRACT
Despite the recent publication of important studies, 1 the role played by women in the Risorgimento perhaps remains the single most neglected aspect of nineteenth-century Italian history. While women's studies and feminist history have hitherto had limited impact on the field, little has been done in terms of integrating women's agency in the main analysis and narrative of the events. As for other aspects of the Risorgimento, women's involvement must be analysed in terms of class and regional divides, and of the ever-important chasm between city and countryside. Except during revolutionary upheavals, working- and lower middle-class women had fewer opportunities for active political participation than their upper-class ‘sisters’. Social constraints, lack of leisure and education, and especially domestic concerns and related economic pressures contributed to limiting political involvement and awareness in peacetime. On the other hand, it would be mistaken to think that their political horizon was necessarily limited to the home or neighbourhood, as the experience of waged labour was common for women well before industrialization began. In the towns in the centre and north women were extensively employed as spinners, weavers, glove-makers, silk workers and cigar-makers, often outnumbering the male workers. Though working hours were long (twelve to fourteen a day), they could be flexible to allow for domestic duties, an arrangement facilitated by the strength of the domestic industry. As usual, exposure to the market came with both dangers and opportunities. In contrast to what happened in the countryside, the city facilitated cultural intermingling and political heterodoxy, which in turn bred awareness and participation.
