Overview
- Italian women gained the vote by a Council of Ministers measure approved on January 30, 1945 and signed the next day by Umberto II, with a later decree (No. 74 of 1946) defining their eligibility for office effective March 10.
- Municipal elections held from March 10 to April 7, 1946 saw turnout above 89% and about 2,000 women elected to local councils, alongside the first female mayors.
- Women also took part in the June 2, 1946 referendum and Constituent Assembly vote, which sent 21 women to the Assembly from Christian Democrat, Communist, Socialist and Uomo Qualunque lists.
- The wartime and postwar push drew on sustained activism from the Unione donne italiane and the Comitato nazionale pro-voto, reflecting a cross‑party drive to expand suffrage.
- New historical work, including a book by Mario Avagliano and Marco Palmieri, revisits legal and political roots of enfranchisement and notes a 1925 fascist approval of administrative voting rights that never took effect due to authoritarian reforms.