The political philanthropy of the female elites

The Introduction provides some keys to a general comprehension of the book and highlights the connecting thread between the chapters. More specifically: a) it accounts for the adoption of the category of “female activist elite” as a theoretical and heuristic tool enabling us to focus on an economic and political subjectivity which before now has scarcely been subjected to historiographical study; b) it explains the rationale behind the in-depth historiographical study of three figures from this elite (Section 1), all of whom shared the philanthropic-political culture of the international feminist movement and launched both political experiments and groundbreaking, productive economic initiatives which attracted attention from abroad, spreading to other countries; c) it shows how these figures belonged to an international network, reconstructing the direct and indirect relationships which linked them to each other and to other experiences in emancipation based on the promotion of work and of traditional female handicrafts; d) it deals with the theoretical issues arising from the transmission of these experiences to subsequent generations and outlines a general profile of the main figures in the case study in Section 2. e) it discusses some theoretical and methodological issues arising from our research, such as: an assessment from a more general political perspective of the impact of the women’s projects; reflections on the importance of studying inter-family relationships in reconstructing these women’s political history; the need to question traditional historical categories in order to shed light on women’s presence and transmission across generations (Section 3); f) it examines the existing historiography on early 20th-century female elites and pinpoints the gap in the literature that this book helps to fill, setting out an approach centred on relationships and transmission networks; g) it reconstructs the Italian historical context in which the figures and the experiences described in the book were inserted, tracing (i) the development of ideas on emancipation, rights, work, education, healthcare, peace and anti-colonialism and (ii) the interconnections between the female elites and the main cultural and political movements at the beginning of the 20th century; h) it assesses the historical legacy of these elites and their significance for the present.