From memory to legacies. Cultural outcomes, successes, and failures of the feminist movement in Sicily

Abstract

The cultural outcomes of social movements have rarely been explored by scientists, except by very few scholars, even though cultural modifications were actually considered one of the most important goals by the activists. These kinds of outcomes are usually not direct, nor do they have short-term effects; they produce long-range effects that could involve other social spaces and could also produce unanticipated consequences. The principal aim of this work, after a concise theoretical overview on the relationship between social change and social movements, is to investigate through a narrative and qualitative approach the outcomes, successes, and failures of the feminist movement in Sicily. Particular attention will be paid to the relationships between stated goals and achieved outcomes, the unintended and unexpected outcomes of the purposive goals and actions of the activists, and the current social representation of women that in part stems from the feminist struggle. The results of the interviews will be analyzed also in light of some statistical data on the condition of women in Italy.

Keywords:

• cultural change
• social change
• women's movement
• unanticipated consequences

Notes

1. As Merton argues (1936, p. 895), rigorously speaking, the consequences of purposive action are limited to the elements that are exclusively direct outcomes of the action, concretely ‘the consequences result from the interplay of the action and the objective situation’, i.e. the condition of action. This concrete consequence may produce change to the actor or to other people mediated through the social structure, the culture, and the civilization. Thus, a social movement could, in fighting for a widespread cultural change and by achieving new laws and changes in society, contribute to the production of the above kind of unanticipated consequences. These latter are also due to the convergence/collision with the culture and the civilization of a particular society as will be shown in the analysis of the outcomes of the feminist movement in Sicily.

2. Like the ‘joint effects’ model suggest, it is not always possible to attribute outcomes to the action of social movements exclusively, i.e. it is difficult to draw the one and only direct causal connection between the specific goals of the movement and institutional and cultural changes. In fact, a joint-effects model/analysis takes into consideration not only sets of variables such as movement claims, effects of movement actions, and effects of outside events and actions, but also the interrelation among these (Tilly 1999, Giugni 1998, Giugni and Passy 2001).

3. Qualitative interviews with a judgement sample of the Sicilian movement: 38 activists who were part of the feminist movement in the cities of Palermo (10), Catania (12), Messina (8), and Syracuse (8) chosen from the principal groups that participated in the collective action in the decades 1970–1990.

4. In fact, the following results had to be considered as the first step of a work that is currently in progress.

5. The exception of these difficulties occurs in the analysis of changes that come from very specific short-term goals.

6. According to Olagnero and Saraceno (1993) non-standard methods are, in fact, very useful for an in-depth investigation into the past experiences of a person in a specified time or into the change of roles related to the gender attributes.

7. As it is shown by the following statements, the above difficulty came both from subjective reasons and because of the large social and cultural changes that the movement had set as a final goal:

I can't manage the word ‘goal’ because feminism was not a revolution neither of content nor of programs, that are meaningful if you aim to achieve power and, consequently, you must show goals, numbers and plans. (La.)

The feminist issue had no goals […] it was a movement that aimed at changing the symbolic, it happened in similar conditions in different parts of the world very far from each other, at almost the same time […]. (Ma.)

8. This process was named by Carla Lonzi (1978) ‘de-culturalization movement’.

9. As Va. says: ‘when my mother saw me and my sister go to the feminist demonstration, she told us: “Yes, you go and protest in the square, but am I not a woman too? And, who will wash the underclothes (le mutande) in my place?”’

10. The perverse effect concerns the effects contrary to what was originally intended, i.e. the ‘undesirable unintended consequences’; this idea seems particularly suitable to this case. As Boudon (1977, p. 15) argues, in fact, these kind of effects ‘produce unwanted and often unexpected social imbalances, and they play a fundamental role in social change’.

11. I discuss a qualitative piece of field research conducted in seven Southern Italian cities (Napoli, Salerno, Cosenza, Lecce, Messina, Catania, Cagliari) from 1994 to 1997 on a sample of women, all 30–35 years old, graduates and married (Oppo et al. 2000)

12. At the time, Italian legislation, in particular article n. 544 of the penal code, allowed the perpetrator to be absolved of the crime of rape, even when minors were involved, in the case of a shotgun wedding between the rapist and the victim; in fact, sexual violence was not considered an offense to the person but to morality.

In opposition to the customs of the times, Franca Viola rejected her shotgun wedding. Her father pretended to agree with the marriage, while the Alcamo policemen prepared a trap: when the abductor and his accomplices came back to the town with the girl, they were arrested.

But another sixteen years had to pass before the abrogation of this law, cancelled by article 1 of law 442/81, which abolished the possibility of being absolved of the crime of sexual violence with a subsequent wedding.

13. For a review on the relationship between women and social economy in Italy, see Moschini (2007).

14. This will be shown through statistical data in the following overview about the condition of women.

15. The current trend is toward the loss of male sexual supremacy, the overcoming of the reproductive subordination of woman, of the reduction of the possession and the male dominance of the female body, and for women to regain possession of the full and free use of their bodies. In this context, the decline in the birth rate became seen as a female conquest, a kind of realignment of the power relationship between the two sexes (Bimbi 1985).

16. As D. says, after the second half of the 1970s, a new phase began within the feminist movement, the phase of the ‘thought of sexual difference’, that took hold regarding the struggle for female emancipation, partly achieved, to reach ‘the feminism of difference, i.e. the assertion that the true problem was not to ask for rights, but to put themselves forward just as different individuals’.

17. See Interministerial Committee for EU Affairs (‘CIACE’), under the co-ordination of the Department for EU Policies, Presidency of the Council of Ministers. Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs. National Reform Programme 2008–2010. Rome, 6 November 2008, p. 104–106, and Codurelli et al. (2010).

18. For the historical information see Ravera (1951) and Federici (1963).

19. Sentences directly translated from incorrect Italian.