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Progetto

Prin 2022

The Economic Thought of Italian Women (1750-1999): Methodological Issues, Ideas, Impact, International Links, a Census and an Online Database

Background

This project is part of the growing wave of interest in women’s contribution to the history of economic thought, evident in the international literature. The literature on the presence of women in the history of economic thought has grown enormously since the 1990s (Pujol 1992, Groenewegen 1994, Dimand, Dimand and Forget 1995 and 2000; Polkinghorn and Thomson 1998; Madden 2002; Madden, Seiz and Pujol 2004; Marcuzzo and Rosselli 2008; Forget 2011; Madden and Dimand 2019), and has recently seen an acceleration (Rostek 2021; May 2022; Kuiper 2022; Chassonnery-Zaïgouche, Forget and Singleton 2022). Much of this research concentrates on the Anglo-Saxon world, other studies take a global geographical perspective, and yet others focus on Europe (Agenio Calderón, Małecka and Mosca, 2022).

What can be said about Italy’s participation in this line of research? On Italian women’s contribution to the history of economic thought there is a huge gap of knowledge and analysis, as is clearly shown in Faucci (2014), which does not mention a single contribution by women. Since then, very few studies have dealt with this theme, for instance Corsi and Zacchia (2019) and Zacchia (2019), which mainly focus on the second half of the 1900s. No studies have gone further back than 1930, except for the pioneering work on Jenny Griziotti Kretschmann (Parisi 2007). Much therefore still remains to be done, starting from a systematic preliminary census, in order to discover and study the Italian women that in history reflected on economic issues.

Method

Compared to the methods used in the reconstruction of male economic thought, the task of identifying the women involved in the history of economic ideas calls for the rethinking of the hierarchy of sources and a significant enlargement of the borders of the economic realm. The analysis is based both on women’s publications and unpublished writings, and on their activities and networks of relationships. As well as the search for theoretical innovations, close attention has been paid to the context in which their economic ideas developed, using the tools of intellectual, economic and cultural history. In constructing the database, the method adopted followed the ASEE (Archivio Storico delle Economiste e degli Economisti, https://ase.sie.univpm.it/) model, and include biographies, bibliographies, works, manuscripts, documents and images.

Research Project Objectives

The overall aim of the project is to reconstruct the thought and impact of overlooked or forgotten Italian female “economists” and, through them, to rethink the history of economic thought from a gender perspective. For this purpose the research intends: to conduct the first ever census of women who in various guises dealt with economic issues; to construct an online database; to bring out and analyse their economic ideas, their impact on economic culture, policy, facts and theory, as well as their international links; to discover traditions and recent trends in women’s thought that enable a critical rethinking of the canon of economic thought which ignores the contribution made by women.
To achieve this aim the research intends:
  • to carry out the first ever census of these figures in order to set up its own online database;
  • to bring to the fore and analyse their economic ideas, their impact on economic culture, policy, facts and theory, as well as their international links;
  • to discover traditions and recent trends in women’s thought that enable a critical rethinking of the canon of economic thought, which ignores the contribution made by women.

Census Of Women Economists

The first aim of the project is to implement a census of the women “economists” in Italy from 1750 to 1999. The term “economist” here includes all the women who left a trace of ideas related to economic issues, in the broad sense.

The census will start from the women about whom something is already known, thanks to the previous work of the PI and the other associated investigators, and also thanks to the abstracts submitted for the call for papers launched by the Associazione Italiana per la Storia del Pensiero Economico (AISPE) on the subject of "Women between economic facts and ideas in Italy (1750-1950)”. In fact, the 25 abstracts received identify a good number of significant female figures, who will be used here as “clues” to expand the investigation, through the reconstruction of their relationships, in search of other figures. The term clue refers here to the circumstantial methodology proposed by Carlo Ginzburg (1986): these figures will act as clues to the neglected or distorted historical phenomenon of women’s contribution to the history of economic thought which is hard to detect at first sight.

Among the female figures already identified, the following can be mentioned: two women who lived in the 18th century, Isabella De Mari Doria (1708-1785) and Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel (1752-1799); many more figures in the next century, such as Carolina Erba Branca (1806-1893), Emilia Peruzzi (1827-1900), Claudia Grismondi Antona Traversi (1837-1908), Anna Maria Mozzoni (1837-1920), Gualberta Alaide Beccari (1842-1906), Maria Schiratti Toniolo (1852-1929), Anna Kuliscioff (1855-1925), Maria Pasolini Ponti (1856-1938), Cora Slocomb Savorgnan di Brazzà (1862-1944), Harriet Lathrop Dunham (1864-1939), Aurelia Josz (1869-1944), Alice Hallgarten Franchetti (1874-1911). In the fascist period, Margherita Grassini Sarfatti (1880-1961), Maria Diez Gasca (1881-1966), Jenny Griziotti Kretschmann (1884-1980), Maria Castellani (1896-1985), Iris Cutting Origo (1902-1988) and Luisa Riva Sanseverino (1903-1985). Finally, the more recent Paola Maria Arcari (1907-1967), Lydia De Novellis (1908-2000), Vera Cao Pinna (1909-1986), Nora Federici (1910-2001), Costanza Costantino (1913-1992), Angela Zucconi (1914-2000), Francesca Duchini (1919-2010) and Almerina Ipsevich (1930-2003).

Defining The Economic Sphere

Like other research studies on women’s economic thought, this project adopted a broad definition of the economic realm. To enable women’s ideas to be included in the history of economic thought, it is in fact necessary for the scope of the discipline to be expanded beyond the confines of market analysis, to cover thought on many other spheres, like the informal domestic field, business, health, solidarity, etc. Examples of the topics that we think should be included in the economic realm, in order to acknowledge that economic thought existed among women of the past, are those dealt with by feminist economists.
Without overlooking the pursuit of theoretical innovations in women’s writings, the aspect most reconstructed is likely to be their economic culture, in the sense of the widespread and commonly accepted economic principles (see Barucci 2012), on which women based their opinions, decisions and actions in the economic field. This is why, as we said, close attention will be paid to the cultural context in which they lived, which often proves to be the only way to reconstruct their ideas on economic issues accurately.

Expected Results And Advances In Knowledge

Since it is the first systematic research on women’s economic thought in Italy in a historical perspective, the results expected in terms of advances in knowledge can be summed up as follows:
  • Expand knowledge of Italian female “economists” and provide access to an online database of the digital products that are gradually scanned
  • Circulate profound reflections on the methodological issues that emerge in dealing with women’s thought and role in a historical perspective, specifically related to the economic field
  • Make studies available on the economic thought of a large number of women operating in Italy between 1750 and 1999, which has never been investigated before, at least from the point of view of history of economic thought
  • Increase knowledge of their impact on the Italian and international economic, cultural and political context
  • Open new avenues, also for foreign colleagues, for the reconstruction of bonds and influences exerted and experienced at the international level
  • Provide an historical perspective to the investigation of the main determinants of gender imbalance in the economic profession
  • Contribute to overcoming gender bias in the history of economic thought.

Bibliography

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