California Italian Studies

In May 1923, women from more than forty countries descended on Rome to promote, articulate, and celebrate women’s global fight for suffrage and equal rights. The previous fall, board members of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) had traveled to Rome to oversee progress on the congress. Little did the organization’s American president Carrie Chapman Catt or the local Italian planning committee know that they would soon witness the Fascist seizure of power in Italy. For members of the Federazione Nazionale Pro Suffragio Femminile, the IWSA’s Italian affiliate, and the Egyptian Feminist Union, the Rome 1923 congress presented a pivotal moment to gain support in the aftermath of regime change. While the IWSA sought the participation of all women irrespective of their geography, race, and religion, its majority Protestant North Atlantic membership consistently marginalized Italian, Egyptian, and other Mediterranean women based on ethnoreligious and Orientalist prejudices and stereotypes. Often these views about Catholicism and Islam did not align with Pro Suffragio’s and the Egyptian Feminist Union’s views of themselves and their countries. Both Italian and Egyptian figures involved with the congress would engage with rhetoric about antiquity and modernity, whether from the IWSA’s leadership or as part of their own self-representation. Despite achieving some successes in Rome, Pro Suffragio and the Egyptian Feminist Union would remain marginalized within the international suffrage movement.