AAC Semaine de formation doctorale “Droits, travail, activités économiques des femmes dans les villes de l’Europe moderne”

Droits, travail, activités économiques des femmes dans les villes de l’Europe moderne

Semaine de formation doctorale

ANR DÉFI : Droits, Économies, Femmes, Italies Gender and Agency in Venice, Florence, Naples, Palermo

Université de Rouen, 7-10 septembre 2026

Women working pearls (1883), by Alessandro Milesi

La recherche en histoire des femmes et du genre entre toujours en dialogue avec l’actualité et la contemporanéité : dans le domaine de l’histoire du travail, les discriminations salariales, la difficile conciliation entre travail et maternité, les différents ‘plafonds de verre’ sont des réalités de très longue durée.

Toutefois, les recherches sur le travail des femmes dans les sociétés préindustrielles ont souvent été entravées par le silence des archives, en particulier en ce qui concerne le travail des femmes mariées. Cette situation documentaire a encouragé les historien.ne.s à multiplier les sources, en recourant à dessources « qualitatives » et en particulier à des sources judiciaires, notamment dans les régions européennes où les sources notariales et les recensements font défaut (Ogilvie, 2003 ; Erickson, 2008 ;Ågren, 2017). La reconstitution et la quantification des activités des femmes à l’époque moderne, période de profondes mutations caractérisée par des crises récurrentes, ont progressé, grâce à l’intersection de données quantitatives et qualitatives (Macleod, Shepard, Ågren, 2023).

Au-delà des recherches sur la protoindustrialisation et la révolution industrieuse, qui auraient donné de nouvelles opportunités de travail aux femmes en milieu rural, il reste utile d’insister sur les possibilités offertes par les villes. Les villes étaient des sources de soutien et de travail pour les femmes, et celles-ci constituaient une ressource nécessaire pour adapter les économies urbaines dans le contextede la première mondialisation (Simonton, 2017 et 2023). Il est important d’analyser leur contribution, à différentes étapes de leur cycle de vie, à la production de richesse et à l’évolution économique des villes, en réévaluant ainsi, par rapport à l’évolution historiographique de ces dernières années, les possibilités offertes par les contextes urbains dans le domaine de l’assistance, de l’accès aux marchés et aux corps de métier, mais aussi en tant que contextes dans lesquels pouvaient se développer des activités rémunératrices clandestines ou illicites – sur lesquelles les archives des corporations et les sourcesjudiciaires peuvent apporter un éclairage (Bellavitis, 2018 et 2023).

Les recherches, en plus de mettre en évidence la présence des femmes, de tous âges et de tous statuts matrimoniaux, sur le marché du travail rémunéré, ont proposé un modèle de leur présence dans les corps de métier qui contredit la « thèse du déclin » selon laquelle les femmes en auraient été exclues au débutde l’époque moderne (Howell 1986 ; Wiesner, 1986 ; Ogilvie, 2003). L’image du « mouvement enaccordéon » proposée par Angela Groppi à propos du cas de Rome (Groppi, 1990) décrit de manière éloquente le processus par lequel l’inclusion ou l’exclusion des travailleuses des corps de métier dépend des conjonctures économiques même si le monde corporatif maintien son caractère foncièrement patriarcal (Ogilvie, 2019). Enfin, même si elles ne participaient pas pleinement à la corporation, les femmes pouvaient néanmoins constituer une main-d’œuvre importante, à la limite du travail au noir, dans une zone grise désormais mieux étudiée, notamment par la recherche en histoire contemporaine (Teseo https://www.teseopress.com/dictionnaire/).

Des recherches récentes ont réintégré les activités économiques des femmes dans le « grand récit » du développement du capitalisme et de l’essor des économies d’Europe du Nord-Ouest, en insérant l’analyse dans un examen plus large des systèmes juridiques et des règles de transmission des biens, des modèles familiaux et de l’accès des femmes à l’éducation, et en adaptant les catégories développées parles économistes contemporains à l’Europe médiévale et moderne (Van Zanden, De Moor, Carmichael,2019). Toutefois, ce modèle a reçu des critiques fondées, car il ne prend pas en compte l’ensemble des recherches européennes sur les activités et les droits économiques des femmes, notamment celles del’Europe du Sud (Sarti, Zucca Micheletto, Lanzinger, De Rosa, 2022).

Parallèlement, les reconstructions économétriques des salaires sur de très longues périodes ont servide base au modèle de la « petite divergence » entre le Nord et le Sud de l’Europe (Allen, 2001), un modèle fortement critiquable, fondé sur des séries partielles, ne prenant que très rarement en compte les salaires des femmes (Humphries, Weisdorf, 2019) et, dans ce cas aussi, ignorant largement les recherches sur l’Europe du Sud (Rota, Weisdorf, 2020).

Cela n’empêche pas que toute recherche sur l’accès des femmes aux activités économiques – travail, entreprise, crédit, mais aussi assistance – doit prendre en compte la dimension juridique et s’interroger sur leurs droits économiques, et la façon dont elles les ont exercés (Bellavitis, Zucca Micheletto, 2019).Les concepts d’‘agentivité’ et ‘capabilités’ restent des approches fondamentales en histoire des femmeset histoire du genre (Simonton, Montenach, 2013).

La semaine de formation doctorale, organisée dans le cadre de l’ANR DÉFI,(https://anrdefi.hypotheses.org/presentation-du-projet) s’adresse aux doctorant.e.s, post- doctorant.e.s et jeunes docteur.e.s travaillant sur les activités économiques des femmes dans les villes de l’Europe moderne. Les matinées seront consacrées à des leçons et les après-midi aux présentations et discussionsdes travaux des participant.e.s. Les langues de travail seront le français et l’anglais. Les travaux commenceront le 7 septembre au matin et se termineront le 10 après-midi. L’organisation prend encharge l’hospitalité (trois ou quatre nuits) et les repas, mais non les frais de voyage.

Les sessions s’organiseront autour des grandes thématiques ci-dessous :

1 Entre quantification et micro-histoire de parcours singuliers : approches multiples du travaildes femmes
2 Droits et agentivité des femmes dans les villes européennes
3 Travail dans et hors les corporations urbaines
4 Charité et travail
5 Formations et apprentissages
6 Accès au crédit

Les propositions de contributions (résumé de 1500 signes en Anglais ou en Français + bref CV ) prennent soin de préciser le corpus de sources utilisées ainsi que les principales références bibliographiques.
Elles sont à adresser conjointement aux organisatrices avant le 31 mars 2026 : anna.bellavitis@univ-rouen.fr
corine.maitte@univ-eiffel.fr

Bibliographie succincte

– Ågren, Maria (ed.), Making a Living, Making a Difference: Gender and Work in Early Modern European Society,New York, Oxford University Press, 2017
– Allen, Robert C., « The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to the First WorldWar », Explorations in Economic History, vol. 38, n. 4, 2001, p. 411-447
– Bellavitis, Anna, Women’s Work and Rights in Early Modern Urban Europe, London, Palgrave, 2018
– Bellavitis, Anna, « Urban Markets », in Macleod, Shepard, Ågren (eds.), The Whole Economy. Work andGender in Early Modern Europe, pp. 136-163.
– Bellavitis Anna – Zucca Micheletto, Beatrice (eds.), Gender, Law and Economic Well-Being in Europe from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century. North vs South ? London-New York, Routledge, 2019
– Erickson, Amy Louise, « Married Women’s Occupations in Eighteenth-Century London », Continuity and Change, 23, 2 (2008), pp. 267-307.
– Groppi, Angela, « Un questionario da arricchire » in La donna nell’economia, secc. XIII-XVIII, Atti delle Settimane di studi dell’Istituto internazionale di Storia economica F. Datini di Prato, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi, Florence, Le Monnier, 1990, pp. 143-154.
– Howell Marta C., Women, Production, and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1986
– Humphries, Jane – Weisdorf, Jacob, “Unreal Wages? Real Income and Economic Growth in England, 1260–1850”, The Economic Journal, Volume 129, Issue 623, October 2019, p. 2867–2887.
– Macleod, Catriona – Shepard, Alexandra – Ågren, Maria (eds.), The Whole Economy. Work and Gender inEarly Modern Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2023
– Ogilvie, Sheilagh, A Bitter Living: Women, Markets, and Social Capital in Early Modern Germany, Oxford,Oxford University Press, 2003
– Sheilagh Ogilvie, The European Guilds. An Economic Analysis, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton UniversityPress, 2019
– Rota, Mauro – Weisdorf, Jacob, « Italy and the Little Divergence in Wages and Prices: New Data, NewResults », The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 80, No. 4 (December 2020), p. 931-960
– Sarti, Raffaella – Zucca Micheletto, Beatrice – Lanzinger, Margareth – De Rosa, Maria Rosaria, « About«Capital Women» by Jan Luiten Van Zanden, Tine De Moor and Sarah Carmichael », QUADERNI STORICI, 171 / a. LVII, n. 2 dicembre 2022
– Simonton, Deborah – Montenach, Anne, eds., Female Agency in the Urban Economy. Gender in European Towns, 1640-1830, New York-London, Routledge, 2013
– Simonton, Deborah, ed., The Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience, London, New York, 2017
– Simonton, Deborah, Gender in the European Town. Ancien Regime to the Modern, London, New York, 2023
-Van Zanden, Jan Luiten-De Moor, Tine-Carmichael, Sarah, Capital Women. The European Marriage Pattern,Female Empowerment and Economic Development in Western Europe, 1300-1800, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019
– Wiesner, Merry E., Working Women in Renaissance Germany, New Brunswick (NJ), Rutgers University Press, 1986.

Vittoria Fiorelli, Mondi a parte. Istituzioni e formazione al lavoro delle donne. Ipotesi metodologiche e percorsi di ricerca

Article publié dans : Marina Formica (dir.),  Artiste, artigiane, stampatrici a Roma nella lunga Età moderna, Rome, 2025 

Vittoria Fiorelli parcourt les problèmes et les acquis de la recherche sur le travail des femmes, dans l’Europe moderne et présente le Projet DÉFI (p. 113):



“Ancora seguendo la forza performativa che il lavoro ha avuto nel sistema organizzativo di istituzioni che hanno segnato la vita urbana di alcune grandi città della penisola, città artigiane e città di servizi osservate nella congiuntura di sviluppo nei secoli della prima età moderna, il progetto DÉFI: Droits, économie, femmes, Italie (XVIe-XVIIIe siècle), finanziato da l’Agence Nationale de la Recherce francese, si è posto l’obiettivo di studiare il contributo delle donne all’economia di quattro centri importanti dello spazio mediterraneo. Studiando Venezia, Firenze, Napoli e Palermo la ricerca intende ricostruire l’incidenza dell’impegno femminile nel lavoro, nelle imprese, nella gestione e nell’accumulo delle risorse finanziarie con una particolare attenzione alle fratture nei periodi di crisi di sistema prodotti da grandi eventi come le epidemie, ma anche da eventi limitati alla sfera del privato e della famiglia”. 

CFP Doctoral training week “Women’s rights, work and economic activities in early modern European cities”

Version française

Women’s rights, work and economic activities in early modern European cities

Doctoral training week

ANR DÉFI: Droits, Économies, Femmes, Italies Gender and Agency in Venice, Florence, Naples, Palermo

University of Rouen, 7-10 September 2026

Women working pearls (1883), by Alessandro Milesi

Research into women’s and gender history always engages in dialogue with current events and contemporary issues: in the field of labour history, wage discrimination, the difficult balance between work and motherhood, and various “glass ceilings” are long-standing realities.

However, research on women’s work in pre-industrial societies has often been hampered by thesilence of the archives, particularly with regard to the work of married women. This lack of documentary evidence has encouraged historians to diversify their sources, turning to “qualitative” sources and inparticular judicial sources, especially in European regions where notarial sources and censuses are lacking (Ogilvie, 2003; Erickson, 2008; Ågren, 2017). The reconstruction and quantification of women’s activities in the early modern era, a period of profound change characterised by recurring crises, has progressed thanks to the intersection of quantitative and qualitative data (Macleod, Shepard, Ågren,2023).

Beyond research on proto-industrialisation and the “industrious revolution”, which are thought to have created new job opportunities for women in rural areas, it is still worth emphasising the opportunities offered by cities. Cities were sources of support and work for women, who were anecessary resource for adapting urban economies in the context of early globalisation (Simonton, 2017 and 2023). It is important to analyse their contribution, at different stages of their life cycle, to theproduction of wealth and the economic development of cities, thereby re-evaluating, in relation to the historiographical developments of recent years, the opportunities offered by urban contexts in terms ofassistance, access to markets and trades, but also as contexts in which clandestine or illicit income-generating activities could develop – on which guild archives and judicial sources can shed light (Bellavitis, 2018 and 2023).

In addition to highlighting the presence of women of all ages and marital statuses in the paid labour market, research has proposed a model of their presence in the guilds that contradicts the ‘decline thesis’ according to which women were excluded from the guilds in the early modern period (Howell, 1986; Wiesner, 1986; Ogilvie, 2003). The image of the ‘accordion movement’ proposed by Angela Groppi in relation to Rome (Groppi, 1990) eloquently describes the process by which the inclusion or exclusion of women workers from the guilds depends on economic conditions, even though the corporate world remains fundamentally patriarchal (Ogilvie, 2019). Finally, even if they did notparticipate fully in the guild, women could nevertheless constitute an important workforce, bordering on undeclared work, in a grey area that is now better studied, particularly by contemporary historyr esearch (Teseo https://www.teseopress.com/dictionnaire/).

Recent research has reintegrated women’s economic activities into the “grand narrative” of the development of capitalism and the rise of the economies of north-western Europe, placing the analysis within a broader examination of legal systems and rules governing the transfer of property, familymodels and women’s access to education, and by adapting the categories developed by contemporary economists to medieval and early modern Europe (Van Zanden, De Moor, Carmichael, 2019). However, this model has received well-founded criticism because it does not take into account all European research on women’s economic activities and rights, particularly in Southern Europe (Sarti, Zucca Micheletto, Lanzinger, De Rosa, 2022).

At the same time, econometric reconstructions of wages over very long periods have served as the basis for the model of the ‘Little divergence’ between northern and southern Europe (Allen, 2001), a highly questionable model based on partial series that very rarely takes women’s wages into account (Humphries, Weisdorf, 2019) and, in this case too, largely ignoring research on Southern Europe (Rota, Weisdorf, 2020).

Any research on women’s access to economic activities – work, business, credit, but also assistance – must take into account the legal dimension and examine their economic rights and how they exercised them (Bellavitis, Zucca Micheletto, 2019). The concepts of “agency” and “capabilities”remain fundamental approaches in women’s history and gender history (Simonton, Montenach, 2013).

The doctoral training week, organised as part of the ANR DÉFI programme (https://anrdefi.hypotheses.org/presentation-du-projet), is aimed at PhD students, post-doctoral researchers and young doctors working on women’s economic activities in early modern European cities. Mornings will be devoted to lectures and afternoons to presentations and discussions of participants’work. The working languages will be French and English. Work will begin on the morning of 7 September and end on the afternoon of 10 September. The organisers will cover accommodation (three or four nights) and meals, but not travel expenses.

The sessions will be organised around the following main themes:

1 Between quantification and micro-history of individual trajectories: multiple approaches towomen’s work
2 Women’s rights and agency in European cities
3 Work within and outside urban guilds
4 Charity and work
5 Training and apprenticeships
6 Access to credit

Proposals for contributions (1500-character abstract in English or French + brief CV) should specify the corpus of sources used and the main bibliographical references. They should be sent jointly to the organisers before 31 March 2026:
anna.bellavitis@univ-rouen.fr
corine.maitte@univ-eiffel.fr

Short Bibliography

– Ågren, Maria (ed.), Making a Living, Making a Difference: Gender and Work in Early Modern European Society,New York, Oxford University Press, 2017
– Allen, Robert C., « The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to the First WorldWar », Explorations in Economic History, vol. 38, n. 4, 2001, p. 411-447
– Bellavitis, Anna, Women’s Work and Rights in Early Modern Urban Europe, London, Palgrave, 2018
– Bellavitis, Anna, « Urban Markets », in Macleod, Shepard, Ågren (eds.), The Whole Economy. Work andGender in Early Modern Europe, pp. 136-163.
– Bellavitis Anna – Zucca Micheletto, Beatrice (eds.), Gender, Law and Economic Well-Being in Europe from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century. North vs South ? London-New York, Routledge, 2019
– Erickson, Amy Louise, « Married Women’s Occupations in Eighteenth-Century London », Continuity and Change, 23, 2 (2008), pp. 267-307.
– Groppi, Angela, « Un questionario da arricchire » in La donna nell’economia, secc. XIII-XVIII, Atti delle Settimane di studi dell’Istituto internazionale di Storia economica F. Datini di Prato, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi, Florence, Le Monnier, 1990, pp. 143-154.
– Howell Marta C., Women, Production, and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1986
– Humphries, Jane – Weisdorf, Jacob, “Unreal Wages? Real Income and Economic Growth in England, 1260–1850”, The Economic Journal, Volume 129, Issue 623, October 2019, p. 2867–2887.
– Macleod, Catriona – Shepard, Alexandra – Ågren, Maria (eds.), The Whole Economy. Work and Gender inEarly Modern Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2023
– Ogilvie, Sheilagh, A Bitter Living: Women, Markets, and Social Capital in Early Modern Germany, Oxford,Oxford University Press, 2003
– Sheilagh Ogilvie, The European Guilds. An Economic Analysis, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton UniversityPress, 2019
– Rota, Mauro – Weisdorf, Jacob, « Italy and the Little Divergence in Wages and Prices: New Data, NewResults », The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 80, No. 4 (December 2020), p. 931-960
– Sarti, Raffaella – Zucca Micheletto, Beatrice – Lanzinger, Margareth – De Rosa, Maria Rosaria, « About«Capital Women» by Jan Luiten Van Zanden, Tine De Moor and Sarah Carmichael », QUADERNI STORICI, 171 / a. LVII, n. 2 dicembre 2022
– Simonton, Deborah – Montenach, Anne, eds., Female Agency in the Urban Economy. Gender in European Towns, 1640-1830, New York-London, Routledge, 2013
– Simonton, Deborah, ed., The Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience, London, New York, 2017
– Simonton, Deborah, Gender in the European Town. Ancien Regime to the Modern, London, New York, 2023
-Van Zanden, Jan Luiten-De Moor, Tine-Carmichael, Sarah, Capital Women. The European Marriage Pattern,Female Empowerment and Economic Development in Western Europe, 1300-1800, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019
– Wiesner, Merry E., Working Women in Renaissance Germany, New Brunswick (NJ), Rutgers

Call for papers : Economic Violence. Domination, Exploitation, and Gender Inequalities in the Long Term

Naples, 8–10 October 2026

Economic violence is both a mechanism and a manifestation of gender-based violence. Whether acting alone or combined with other forms of discrimination and abuse, it contributes to the exercise of male power and control within patriarchal systems and relationships, by constraining women’s independence and their economic and financial autonomy.

Current global data on gender disparities are striking. The Global Gender Gap Index published by the World Economic Forum in 2025—whose first of its four indicators is “Economic Participation and Opportunity”—shows that the gender gap in this area stands at 61%, making it, together with political participation, the most significant. Despite a reduction of the gap (from 55.1% in 2006 to the current 60.7%), women represent only 41.2% of the labour force and hold merely 29% of managerial positions (WEF GGGR 2025). Moreover, while 51% of global economies (98 out of 190) have adopted laws on equal pay, only 35 have introduced concrete implementation measures (World Bank 2024).

Global economic transformations, even after the pandemic, and the current inflationary pressures disproportionately affect women, due to their structural vulnerability across different geographical and socio-political contexts—both in the Global North and South.

Italy ranks 85th out of 148 countries in the overall Global Gender Gap Index (35th out of 40 in Europe), but 117th for the economic indicator (WEF GGGR 2025, pp. 223–224). Data from the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) reveal a greater fragility of Italian women compared to their male counterparts in both the work and money dimensions of the Gender Equality Index—that is, lower participation in the labour market, lower income levels, and higher exposure to poverty risks, both in absolute terms and relative to the European average (EIGE 2024).

The report Financial Literacy and Economic Violence, presented to the Italian Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on Feminicide and All Forms of Gender-Based Violence on 4 October 2024, confirms these trends and details the factors that exacerbate such inequalities (Bank of Italy 2024).

Economic violence both arises from and reinforces this structural context. Unsurprisingly, the 2024 Report on Gender Equality in the European Union highlights the issue of gender-based violence and harassment in the workplace, recalling the Council of Europe’s invitation to member states to ratify the Violence and Harassment Convention (ILO Convention 190) (EU Commission 2024).

However, the issue extends much further. EIGE underlines the limited visibility of economic violence compared to more explicit forms of abuse, as well as the lack of comprehensive data. The 2021 EUROSTAT estimate—that 8% of women aged 18–74 in thirty European countries have experienced economic violence—likely represents only the tip of the iceberg (EUROSTAT 2021). At the same time, EIGE reports that where gender gaps are narrower, behaviours associated with economic violence are less socially tolerated (EIGE 2024, p.55).

Data from Italian anti-violence centres show that women’s economic dependence on their partners often prevents or delays them from leaving abusive relationships. Furthermore, analysis of applications for the Freedom Income (Reddito di libertà, introduced in 2020 for women assisted by such centres) provides useful insight into the scope and characteristics of gender-based violence and the role played by economic vulnerability (P. Biasi, B. Ceremigna, M. De Paola, “Violenza di genere e indipendenza economica,” Il Mulino). Recent studies identify additional risk factors that expose women to economic violence or heighten its intensity: the unequal burden of family care, the presence of dependent children, and the positive impact of higher education (F. D’Agostino, G. Zacchia, M. Corsi, “Risk of Economic Violence: A New Quantification,” International Journal of Financial Studies, 2024, 12:82, DOI).

Historical research on family, labour, economy,  and gender violence has long provided valuable tools for contextualizing and problematizing present-day data. For example, a recent issue of Genesis. Rivista della Società Italiana delle Storiche (A. Bellavitis, M. Martinat, eds., Disuguaglianze. Il valore delle donne, 2, 2022) shows how gender perspectives have remained paradoxically marginal in the study of equality/inequality, and offers essays that, by integrating economic with social dimensions, reveal the persistence of gender asymmetries. Similarly, an international conference on Genre et Argent (Anaïs Albert, Christopher Fletcher, Julie Marfany, Marianne Thiven, Valentina Toneatto, eds.) emphasized that the relationship between women and money remains underexplored: the handling and control of money—its use as a tool of domination or empowerment, its ownership and management—have rarely been treated as independent historical problems. Sociologists and anthropologists remind us that “money” encompasses but also transcends “currency,” acquiring meaning within social contexts and systems of affect, value, custom, and belief. Thus, money becomes a powerful lens through which to reveal gender norms and social relations. This is well demonstrated by Céline Bessières and Sybille Gollac’s Le genre du capital. Comment la famille reproduit les inégalités (Paris, 2020), which investigates how intra-family distribution of wealth in twentieth-century France continues to reproduce gender inequality.

Beyond Europe, both past and present, multiple forms of control and deprivation have shaped gendered divisions of labour and posed major obstacles to women’s social, political, legal, and religious rights. Corresponding to these obstacles are diverse strategies, discourses, and practices of gender justice that, while rooted in specific contexts, offer a dynamic transnational field for analysing claims, language, and emancipatory possibilities.

Inequality, in terms of both research approaches and historical phenomena, invites us to adopt gender violence as an integrated and revealing lens—one that captures broad structural processes while offering a fertile methodological tool.

Considering these reflections, the Gender History Research Centre of the University of Naples “L’Orientale” is organizing a conference dedicated to the history of economic violence—forms of domination, surveillance, exploitation, and gendered economic sabotage within family and private relations, in workplaces, and in institutional contexts.

The conference aims to:

  • Provide a long-term analytical perspective
  • Highlight diverse historical and geographical contexts
  • Develop classical and feminist theoretical approaches
  • Present case studies drawn from historical sources
  • Promote comparative viewpoints.

The historical approach will be privileged to question linear narratives of “modernization” and to complicate our reading of the present.

Suggested Themes

  • Control and appropriation of resources; women’s property and economic rights; exclusion from decision-making; coercion into financial obligations; denial of economic support.
  • Legal and cultural barriers to using or accessing money, credit, or savings; restrictions on consumption and spending autonomy.
  • Sabotage of women’s economic independence and careers.
  • Legal exclusion or social inhibition from professions; feminization of trades and resulting devaluation; wage and maternity inequalities.
  • Invisibility of women’s labour and income in historical sources.
  • Gender differences in economic literacy and access to financial information.
  • Conflicts between paid work or study and domestic care responsibilities.
  • Sexual harassment and coercion in the workplace.
  • Intersections of gendered economic experience with migration and other vulnerabilities.
  • Gender stereotypes concerning financial competence or occupational suitability.
  • Individual and collective (feminist) resistance to exploitation; forms of cooperation and mutual support.
  • Institutional responses to economic violence.
  • Women’s relationship to labour, production, and money in classical and feminist economic thought.

Submission Guidelines

Proposals (in Italian or English) must be sent by 15 December 2025 to
📩 centrogenderhistory@unior.it
with the subject line: “Convegno violenza economica”.

Please include:

  • Title
  • Abstract (max. 1,500 characters, spaces included)
  • Short bio/CV

Notification of acceptance will be sent by 30 January 2026 after review by the scientific committee.

The conference will take place in person only in Naples.
No participation fee is required. Travel and accommodation costs are to be borne by participants. If funding or scholarships become available, details will be announced through a separate call.

Scientific Committee

Simona Feci (University of Naples “L’Orientale” – coordinator),
Paola Avallone (CNR-ISEM),
Vincenzo Bavaro (University of Naples “L’Orientale”),
Anna Bellavitis (Université de Rouen),
Sara Borrillo (University of Naples “L’Orientale”),
Maria Rosaria De Rosa (University Suor Orsola Benincasa),
Ida Fazio (University of Palermo),
Vittoria Fiorelli (University Suor Orsola Benincasa),
Alessandra Gissi (University of Naples “L’Orientale”),
Marzia Mauriello (University of Naples “L’Orientale”),
Lea Nocera (University of Naples “L’Orientale”),
Raffaella Salvemini (CNR-ISEM),
Domenico Rizzo (University of Naples “L’Orientale”),
Antonella Sannino (University of Naples “L’Orientale”).