Conference Program

The contribution aims to outline the socio-political commitment of Angela Maria Guidi Cingolani (31/10/1896 – 11/07/1991, Rome), the first woman in the Italian Republic to hold a government position.

She received her early formation within the women’s associations of Catholic Action; her encounter with Luigi Sturzo was decisive, as he involved her in the Organization for Civil and Religious Assistance to War Orphans and encouraged her to join the Italian People’s Party in 1919, where she assumed the position of secretary of the Roman women’s group until the party’s dissolution by the Fascist regime in 1926.

In 1921, she founded the National Committee for Women’s Labour and Cooperation, serving as its secretary until 1926. In 1925, she passed the competitive exam to become a Labour Inspector. Throughout the Fascist period, she continued to devote herself to women’s work and, together with her husband Mario Cingolani – a prominent figure in Catholic Action and later a deputy to the Constituent Assembly – she took part in the clandestine network of the Christian Democracy, of which she was a national councillor from 1944 to 1947. In the post-war period, she joined the party’s national leadership as well as the central committee of the women’s movement.

In 1945, as a member of the National Council (Consulta Nazionale), her voice as a woman was the first in history to resonate in Montecitorio. She was elected in 1946 to the Constituent Assembly of Italy and, in 1948, became a deputy in the first republican legislature, devoting particular attention to the debate on the law for the protection of working mothers. She was among the founders of the Italian Committee for the Moral and Social Defence of Women in 1950 and served as Undersecretary for Crafts at the Ministry of Industry and Commerce from 1951 to 1953.