Feminist Activism and Practice: Asserting Autonomy and Resisting Precarity

This chapter identifies Berlusconi’s policies that impacted most strongly on Italian women during 2001–06, and analyses the resistance offered by the Italian feminist movement to what were seen by many as assaults on the dignity and autonomy of all women. Discussion begins with a contextualization of the feminist movement at the millennium. We then analyse the activities, views and experiences of several Italian feminist collectives, especially of emerging feminists who are redefining established activist practices. The discussion draws on interviews conducted in 2007, and on textual and web sources. We argue that these years saw a return to large-scale demonstrations, but certainly did not impose a monolithic identity on participants. Collective action was characterized by a blending of the personal and the political, established through second-wave feminist thought and practice, but with a contemporary twist in the recognition of individual specificities and differences among women, and an emphasis on irony.