Grande Guerra e storia di genere

In the local and national archival collections, in the "public order" category, there is practically no evidence of protest demonstrations for the bread and the war of which women were protagonists in Terra d'Otranto. This shortcoming is offset by the judicial funds of the State Archives of Lecce and the Central State Archive, which testify to a wide movement of struggle and protest that has started the process of demolishing the domestic barriers of Salentine women. The investigation, already exhaustive, needs to be deepened to understand how spontaneous those demonstrations were and how much they influenced the socialist organizations (neutralist and pacifist) and the parishes (linked to the Vatican's message of peace). What appears to be established is that the women managed to appropriate a role of active presence in the territory they had never had before, thus starting the struggle for their own emancipation.