80 years ago, a landmark referendum empowered women in Italy and led to the birth of the Italian Republic.On 2 June 1946, millions of Italian women entered polling stations across a country still scarred by war and queued to do something their mothers and grandmothers had been denied: cast a vote at national level.The occasion was the institutional referendum in which the Italian people chose between monarchy and republic, and simultaneously elected a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. It was a founding moment in modern Italian history, and it was also, for around half the electorate, the first time they had ever been recognised as full citizens of a democratic state. 80 years on, Italy is marking this anniversary with official ceremonies and events across the country. In addition to celebration, the occasion invites reflection on the long and frequently obstructed journey that led Italian women to the ballot box. A movement rooted in the Risorgimento The campaign for women's political rights in Italy did not begin in the 20th century. Its origins lie in the upheaval of national unification, the period known as the Risorgimento, which produced a newly unified Italian state in 1861 - a state that promptly excluded women from its political life. Anna Maria Mozzoni, born in Milan in 1837, is commonly held as the founder of the women's movement in Italy, and her pivotal involvement in the campaign for women's suffrage was central to that role. Mozzoni was a writer, activist and polemicist of formidable energy. Her groundbreaking work La donna e i suoi rapporti sociali (Woman and her Social Relationships), published in 1864, challenged prevailing social norms and highlighted the need for women's emancipation. She also engaged directly with international feminist thought: in 1879, she published her Italian translation of John Stuart Mill's The Subjection of Women. In an unsuccessful campaign that lasted decades, Mozzoni sought support for female suffrage through speeches, pamphlets and lobbying parliament, submitting petitions in 1877 and again in 1906. Mozzoni's collaborators were equally determined. In 1881, together with Mozzoni and Cristina Lazzati, Paolina Schiff founded the League for the Promotion of the Interests of Women in Milan - the first organised group in Italy to demand suffrage and equal rights for women - which also demanded reform of the civil code that kept women under the control of men. Organisation and obstruction The turn of the 20th century brought greater institutional organisation to the suffrage cause. The Comitato pro suffragio femminile (Committee for Women's Suffrage) was founded in 1905, becoming the first organisation dedicated specifically to women's voting rights in Italy. Among its most active participants were Mozzoni, Linda Malnati and Carlotta Clerici. Affiliated to the International Women Suffrage Alliance, it was independent of any political or religious preferences. The Alliance for Women Suffrage, born in Berlin in 1904, had an Italian branch chaired by Mozzoni, whose meeting in Rome formally sanctioned the beginning of a political campaign for suffrage. Meanwhile, the momentum of the first world war and its aftermath pushed the question onto the parliamentary agenda. As men departed for the trenches, women took over jobs in fields and factories, making it clear that they could hold the same working positions as men, and the conversation about universal suffrage became newly relevant. The moment of near-breakthrough came in 1919. The lower chamber of the Italian parliament approved women's right to vote that year. However, the law did not pass into force because the government fell before the senate could approve it. The 1919 Legge Sacchi, which extended political rights to "all citizens", was blocked by anticipated elections before the senate could act on it. It was a devastating near-miss, and history would not offer another opportunity for more than two decades. The Fascist interlude The same year that parliamentary momentum appeared to be building - 1922 - Benito Mussolini led his March on Rome and seized power. The same failure that had blocked women's suffrage in 1919 was repeated in 1922, the year of the March on Rome. The fascist regime, while occasionally making hollow promises to feminists, fundamentally reversed the gains women had made. In 1922, Mussolini gave a promise to the Comitato pro suffragio femminile to introduce women's suffrage. Municipal women's suffrage was indeed legalised in 1925, but suffrage at both municipal and national level became powerless after the introduction of fascist dictatorship in 1926. The reality of fascism for Italian women was a regression, not an advance. The Fascist era exacerbated the subordinate social position of women to men. Women were considered mainly as mothers and wives with one duty: bearing healthy, strong children for the regime. The feminist organisations that had sustained the suffrage movement for decades were suppressed. The Comitato pro suffragio femminile was effectively silenced. Mozzoni, the pioneer who had spent her life fighting for the vote, died aged 83 in 1920, on the eve of the fascist takeover, never having seen her cause realised. The war of liberation and a unanimous vote The collapse of fascism and the devastation of the second world war created conditions for a fundamental reimagining of Italian society. Central to this reimagining was the role women had played in the Resistance - the partisan movement that fought against fascist and Nazi occupation. According to historical data, 75,000 Italian women were part of the Resistance's Defence Groups, and 35,000 were active fighters or partigiane. Everywhere in Italy, partisan women fought daily to secure basic necessities for their companions and transported resources, as they were considered less likely to attract suspicion. There were organised groups of women who carried out anti-fascist propaganda, raised funds, organised assistance to political prisoners, maintained communications and participated in military operations. This contribution proved decisive to the suffrage question. The war of resistance, with the voluntary enlistment and direct and indirect participation of thousands of women, was instrumental in the provisional government's practically uncontroversial decision to institute women's suffrage in 1945. The decree on women's suffrage was the last of several items the government had planned to discuss, and it passed without objection. As one historical analysis has noted, Italian women became full citizens in what was described as a surreal climate of serenity and unanimity - a striking contrast to the decades of petitions, obstruction and broken promises that had preceded it. The decisive change came with the decree of 1 March 1945, an immediate consequence of the Resistance movement's fight against fascism and the Allied forces' influence, which set the stage for women's suffrage. The first vote: March 1946 Before the landmark national referendum, Italian women had one prior opportunity to exercise their new right. The first administrative elections in Italy with the participation of both men and women were held on 10 March 1946, and thanks to those elections, six women subsequently wore the tricolour sash of elected office for the first time. The participation rates confounded those who had doubted women's appetite for political engagement. The percentage of women participating in the vote was very high - 89 per cent - disproving the negative predictions of politicians who had doubted that Italian women would take an interest in institutional affairs. Of the more than 2,000 women candidates who stood in local elections, the majority ran on left-wing lists. 2 June 1946: The founding moment The national referendum in 1946 asked Italian citizens a question of existential constitutional importance: should Italy remain a monarchy under the House of Savoy - discredited by its complicity with the fascist regime - or should it become a republic? Simultaneously, voters elected members to a constituent assembly tasked with drafting a new republican constitution. On 2-3 June 1946, Italians went to the polls in the first free national vote in more than two decades. For the first time, women voted alongside men. When the results were announced on 10 June, 12,717,923 Italians had voted for a republic, while 10,719,284 had voted to keep the monarchy. The republic won by a margin of just under two million votes - roughly 54 per cent to 46 per cent. The overall participation rate was 89 per cent of eligible voters. Almost 13 million women (one million more than male voters) participated in this historic election, however the precise breakdown of female votes between republic and monarchy cannot be determined from the aggregate results. The aftermath was turbulent. King Umberto II, who had reigned for only 34 days, went into exile. Monarchist riots broke out in Naples and other southern cities, prompting the court of cassation to delay proclaiming the republic until 18 June. Madri costituenti The referendum was not the only democratic exercise of 2 June 1946. Voters simultaneously elected members to the constituent assembly, and among those elected were 21 women: the so-called Madri costituenti, or Constituent Mothers. 21 women were elected to the constituent assembly and took part in the drafting of the Italian constitution. The women elected sustained the principle of equality at all levels, obtaining important results principally in regard to labour, wages and the protection of maternity. They represented every major political tendency - Christian Democrat, communist, socialist and others - and their presence ensured that the founding document of the republic addressed women's rights in explicit terms. Among the most prominent were Teresa Noce, a communist and trade unionist who had spent years in exile; Nilde Iotti, who would later serve as president of the chamber of deputies from 1979 to 1992; and Maria Montessori's colleague Adele Bei. Their insistence on the inclusion of strong equality provisions shaped the constitution in ways that reverberated for decades. The original text of Article 51, approved in 1947, stated that any citizen of either sex was eligible for public offices and elected positions on equal terms, according to conditions established by law - the outcome of confrontations against those who had sought to limit women's eligibility based on what they deemed their "attitudes and faculties". The significance of the female vote Historians have long debated the precise impact of women's votes on the 1946 referendum outcome. The margin of victory for the republic - substantial but not overwhelming - has led many scholars to argue that women's participation was decisive. Had a lower female turnout depressed the overall pro-republican vote, or had women's votes leant more heavily toward the monarchy (as some contemporary politicians feared they might, given the influence of the Church), the outcome might have been different. The role of the Church was significant but not monolithic. The Vatican did not officially endorse either side, but many Catholic priests and bishops privately favoured the monarchy, which they saw as a bulwark against communism. However, the Christian Democratic Party, the largest in the constituent assembly elections, was officially neutral on the referendum question, and its leader, Alcide De Gasperi, personally favoured a republic while allowing party members to vote according to their conscience. Having made a decisive contribution to the Resistance and the reconstruction of the country, Italian women finally saw their right to participate in democratic life recognised. 2 June 1946 was a decisive moment both institutionally and socially and culturally. Marking the 80th anniversary In 2026, Italy is commemorating the 80th anniversary of both the birth of the Republic and the first exercise of women's suffrage at national level, with the two being inseparable from one another. Italy's Republic Day, Festa della Repubblica, celebrated every year on 2 June, carries added significance this year, with special commemorations expected across the country, particularly in Rome. The Italian tricolour flag is displayed across cities, towns and public buildings. The 2026 anniversary has brought expanded television programming, historical exhibitions and increased international attention. Italy has issued a special commemorative stamp, featuring the smiling face of a young woman voting in the landmark referendum 80 years ago.   A legacy still unfolding The 1946 referendum was both an ending and a beginning. It ended a long struggle for recognition - a struggle that had spanned more than 80 years of petitioning, organising and hoping, and that had survived the suppression of fascism only through the courage of women who risked their lives in the Resistance.   And it began something else: the gradual, uneven and still-incomplete process of translating formal political equality into substantive equality in Italian public life. Eight decades on, Italian women hold the highest offices in the land - including the office of prime minister. Yet the anniversary is marked with an awareness that the distance between legal rights and lived equality remains a subject of ongoing national reckoning.

On 2 June 1946, millions of Italian women entered polling stations across a country still scarred by war and queued to do something their mothers and grandmothers had been denied: cast a vote at national level. The occasion was the institutional referendum in which the Italian people chose between monarchy and republic, and simultaneously elected a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. It was a founding moment in modern Italian history, and it was also, for around half the electorate, the first time they had ever been recognised as full citizens of a democratic state. 80 years on, Italy is marking this anniversary with official ceremonies and events across the country. In addition to celebration, the occasion invites reflection on the long and frequently obstructed journey that led Italian women to the ballot box. The campaign for women's political rights in Italy did not begin in the 20th century. Its origins lie in the upheaval of national unification, the period known as the Risorgimento, which produced a newly unified Italian state in 1861 - a state that promptly excluded women from its political life. Anna Maria Mozzoni, born in Milan in 1837, is commonly held as the founder of the women's movement in Italy, and her pivotal involvement in the campaign for women's suffrage was central to that role. Mozzoni was a writer, activist and polemicist of formidable energy. Her groundbreaking work La donna e i suoi rapporti sociali (Woman and her Social Relationships), published in 1864, challenged prevailing social norms and highlighted the need for women's emancipation. She also engaged directly with international feminist thought: in 1879, she published her Italian translation of John Stuart Mill's The Subjection of Women. In an unsuccessful campaign that lasted decades, Mozzoni sought support for female suffrage through speeches, pamphlets and lobbying parliament, submitting petitions in 1877 and again in 1906. Mozzoni's collaborators were equally determined. In 1881, together with Mozzoni and Cristina Lazzati, Paolina Schiff founded the League for the Promotion of the Interests of Women in Milan - the first organised group in Italy to demand suffrage and equal rights for women - which also demanded reform of the civil code that kept women under the control of men. The turn of the 20th century brought greater institutional organisation to the suffrage cause. The Comitato pro suffragio femminile (Committee for Women's Suffrage) was founded in 1905, becoming the first organisation dedicated specifically to women's voting rights in Italy. Among its most active participants were Mozzoni, Linda Malnati and Carlotta Clerici. Affiliated to the International Women Suffrage Alliance, it was independent of any political or religious preferences. The Alliance for Women Suffrage, born in Berlin in 1904, had an Italian branch chaired by Mozzoni, whose meeting in Rome formally sanctioned the beginning of a political campaign for suffrage. Meanwhile, the momentum of the first world war and its aftermath pushed the question onto the parliamentary agenda. As men departed for the trenches, women took over jobs in fields and factories, making it clear that they could hold the same working positions as men, and the conversation about universal suffrage became newly relevant. The moment of near-breakthrough came in 1919. The lower chamber of the Italian parliament approved women's right to vote that year. However, the law did not pass into force because the government fell before the senate could approve it. The 1919 Legge Sacchi, which extended political rights to "all citizens", was blocked by anticipated elections before the senate could act on it. It was a devastating near-miss, and history would not offer another opportunity for more than two decades. The same year that parliamentary momentum appeared to be building - 1922 - Benito Mussolini led his  and seized power. The same failure that had blocked women's suffrage in 1919 was repeated in 1922, the year of the March on Rome. The fascist regime, while occasionally making hollow promises to feminists, fundamentally reversed the gains women had made. In 1922, Mussolini gave a promise to the Comitato pro suffragio femminile to introduce women's suffrage. Municipal women's suffrage was indeed legalised in 1925, but suffrage at both municipal and national level became powerless after the introduction of fascist dictatorship in 1926. The reality of fascism for Italian women was a regression, not an advance. The Fascist era exacerbated the subordinate social position of women to men. Women were considered mainly as mothers and wives with one duty: bearing healthy, strong children for the regime. The feminist organisations that had sustained the suffrage movement for decades were suppressed. The Comitato pro suffragio femminile was effectively silenced. Mozzoni, the pioneer who had spent her life fighting for the vote, died aged 83 in 1920, on the eve of the fascist takeover, never having seen her cause realised. The collapse of fascism and the devastation of the second world war created conditions for a fundamental reimagining of Italian society. Central to this reimagining was the role women had played in the Resistance - the partisan movement that fought against fascist and Nazi occupation. According to historical data, 75,000 Italian women were part of the Resistance's Defence Groups, and 35,000 were active fighters or partigiane. Everywhere in Italy, partisan women fought daily to secure basic necessities for their companions and transported resources, as they were considered less likely to attract suspicion. There were organised groups of women who carried out anti-fascist propaganda, raised funds, organised assistance to political prisoners, maintained communications and participated in military operations. This contribution proved decisive to the suffrage question. The war of resistance, with the voluntary enlistment and direct and indirect participation of thousands of women, was instrumental in the provisional government's practically uncontroversial decision to institute women's suffrage in 1945. The decree on women's suffrage was the last of several items the government had planned to discuss, and it passed without objection. As one historical analysis has noted, Italian women became full citizens in what was described as a surreal climate of serenity and unanimity - a striking contrast to the decades of petitions, obstruction and broken promises that had preceded it. The decisive change came with the decree of 1 March 1945, an immediate consequence of the Resistance movement's fight against fascism and the Allied forces' influence, which set the stage for women's suffrage. Before the landmark national referendum, Italian women had one prior opportunity to exercise their new right. The first administrative elections in Italy with the participation of both men and women were held on 10 March 1946, and thanks to those elections, six women subsequently wore the tricolour sash of elected office for the first time. The participation rates confounded those who had doubted women's appetite for political engagement. The percentage of women participating in the vote was very high - 89 per cent - disproving the negative predictions of politicians who had doubted that Italian women would take an interest in institutional affairs. Of the more than 2,000 women candidates who stood in local elections, the majority ran on left-wing lists. The national referendum in 1946 asked Italian citizens a question of existential constitutional importance: should Italy remain a monarchy under the House of Savoy - discredited by its complicity with the fascist regime - or should it become a republic? Simultaneously, voters elected members to a constituent assembly tasked with drafting a new republican constitution. On 2-3 June 1946, Italians went to the polls in the first free national vote in more than two decades. For the first time, women voted alongside men. When the results were announced on 10 June, 12,717,923 Italians had voted for a republic, while 10,719,284 had voted to keep the monarchy. The republic won by a margin of just under two million votes - roughly 54 per cent to 46 per cent. The overall participation rate was 89 per cent of eligible voters. Almost  (one million more than male voters) participated in this historic election, however the precise breakdown of female votes between republic and monarchy cannot be determined from the aggregate results. The aftermath was turbulent. King Umberto II, who had reigned for only 34 days, went into exile. Monarchist riots broke out in Naples and other southern cities, prompting the court of cassation to delay proclaiming the republic until 18 June. The referendum was not the only democratic exercise of 2 June 1946. Voters simultaneously elected members to the constituent assembly, and among those elected were 21 women: the so-called Madri costituenti, or Constituent Mothers. 21 women were elected to the constituent assembly and took part in the drafting of the Italian constitution. The women elected sustained the principle of equality at all levels, obtaining important results principally in regard to labour, wages and the protection of maternity. They represented every major political tendency - Christian Democrat, communist, socialist and others - and their presence ensured that the founding document of the republic addressed women's rights in explicit terms. Among the most prominent were Teresa Noce, a communist and trade unionist who had spent years in exile; Nilde Iotti, who would later serve as president of the chamber of deputies from 1979 to 1992; and Maria Montessori's colleague Adele Bei. Their insistence on the inclusion of strong equality provisions shaped the constitution in ways that reverberated for decades. The original text of Article 51, approved in 1947, stated that any citizen of either sex was eligible for public offices and elected positions on equal terms, according to conditions established by law - the outcome of confrontations against those who had sought to limit women's eligibility based on what they deemed their "attitudes and faculties". Historians have long debated the precise impact of women's votes on the 1946 referendum outcome. The margin of victory for the republic - substantial but not overwhelming - has led many scholars to argue that women's participation was decisive. Had a lower female turnout depressed the overall pro-republican vote, or had women's votes leant more heavily toward the monarchy (as some contemporary politicians feared they might, given the influence of the Church), the outcome might have been different. The role of the Church was significant but not monolithic. The Vatican did not officially endorse either side, but many Catholic priests and bishops privately favoured the monarchy, which they saw as a bulwark against communism. However, the Christian Democratic Party, the largest in the constituent assembly elections, was officially neutral on the referendum question, and its leader, Alcide De Gasperi, personally favoured a republic while allowing party members to vote according to their conscience. Having made a decisive contribution to the Resistance and the reconstruction of the country, Italian women finally saw their right to participate in democratic life recognised. 2 June 1946 was a decisive moment both institutionally and socially and culturally. In 2026, Italy is commemorating the 80th anniversary of both the birth of the Republic and the first exercise of women's suffrage at national level, with the two being inseparable from one another. Italy's Republic Day, , celebrated every year on 2 June, carries added significance this year, with special commemorations expected across the country, particularly in Rome. The  is displayed across cities, towns and public buildings. The 2026 anniversary has brought expanded television programming, historical exhibitions and increased international attention. Italy has issued a special commemorative stamp, featuring the smiling face of a young woman voting in the landmark referendum 80 years ago.   The 1946 referendum was both an ending and a beginning. It ended a long struggle for recognition - a struggle that had spanned more than 80 years of petitioning, organising and hoping, and that had survived the suppression of fascism only through the courage of women who risked their lives in the Resistance.   And it began something else: the gradual, uneven and still-incomplete process of translating formal political equality into substantive equality in Italian public life. Eight decades on, Italian women hold the highest offices in the land - including the office of prime minister. Yet the anniversary is marked with an awareness that the distance between legal rights and lived equality remains a subject of ongoing national reckoning.