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48 Rechtstheorie 1 (2017)

handle is hein.journals/recthori48 and id is 1 raw text is: RECHTSTHEORIE 48 (2017), 1-41 Duncker & Humblot, 12165 Berlin THE LEGAL AND POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS CHALLENGING DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN From the Seneca Falls Convention to the Current Feminist Blogosphere* By Annalisa Verza, Bologna I. An Ancient Story The development of feminist themes and trends in legal thought reveals a diversity that suggests a number of ways to go about investigating that histo- ry. But whichever angle we may take in such an investigation, we cannot es- cape the conclusion that this history and development has brought about a breakpoint, a breach torn in the canvas of a culture that - on account of an ancient and deep-rooted legacy - is used to seeing social and legal discrimi- nation against women not as oppressive but simply as natural and justified. Throughout the ages - from the Aristotelian conception of women (described in the Politics as devoid of reason, and therefore in need of being commanded), going through Roman culture (which spread the ancient patriarchal rite of cum manu matrimony, under which the power the paterfamilias held over his daughter would pass to the husband) and through the negative and stereo- typed characterizations of women that marked the Middle Ages and the age of Counter-Reformation misogyny - the fact that women were generally denied equality, independence, an education, and access to any trades and profes- sions other than the most economically and socially marginal, was, until very recently, seldom regarded as problematic. The stubborn cultural inertia of this structure keeping women in a state of subordination is exemplified by the fact that, as late as 1913, Ulpian's famous dictum, Foeminae ab omnibus officiis civilibus et publicis remotae sunt, et ideo nec judice esse possunt, nec magistratum gerere, nec postulare, nec pro alio intervenire, nec procuratores existere,1 was used by the Italian Court of Cassation to bar women from the legal profession.2 * This paper is a contribution to the PRIN Project Soggetti di diritto e vulnerabilite: modelli istituzionali e cenelti giuridici in trasformazione. 1 Women are removed from all civil or public functions and therefore are neither able to be judges nor to undertake a magistracy nor to bring a prosecution nor to intervene on behalf of another nor to be procurators. D 50.17.2 pr Ulpianus libro primo ad Sabinum. 2 Elisabetta Palici di Suni, Tra parity e differenza: Dal voto alle donne alle quote elettorali, Torino 2004, chap. 1. RECHTSTHEORIE 48 (2017) 1

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