The motivations for a women's series

The sources often speak of the world of women in an indirect, cross-cutting way, since over the centuries women have played social, legal, economic and cultural roles that are not always evident. Only in a few cases can gender studies boast of archives and libraries of exclusively female provenance: even with reference to recent periods, their number is small, either because of conservative conduct anchored in outdated historiographical hierarchies or as a result of women's lesser aptitude for documenting their existence and their role in society, expressing a difficulty in considering themselves as agent subjects in history. It is precisely on this side that the organization of the cycle Profiles of Women among Papers and Books was oriented, with which the aim was to illustrate to a wide audience the lives of some female figures and institutions that represent, or have represented, at several levels’ Italian society and culture through the cognitive lens of their papers and books.