page_title: Italian Americans
section_title: Women
hierarchical_section_title: Italian Americans / Business and economy / Women
caption_attribution_description: English: Image of Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire on March 25 - 1911.jpg
context_page_description: Italian Americans are citizens of the United States of America who are of Italian descent. The majority of Italian Americans reside mainly in the Northeast and in urban industrial Midwest metropolitan areas, though smaller communities exist in certain metropolitan areas in other parts of the United States.
  About 5.5 million Italians immigrated to the United States from 1820 to 2004, with the majority of Italian immigrants to the United States arriving in the 20th century from Southern Italy. In 1870, prior to the large wave of Italian immigrants to the United States, there were fewer than 25,000 Italian immigrants in America, many of them Northern Italian refugees from the wars that accompanied the Risorgimento—the struggle for Italian unification and independence from foreign rule which ended in 1871. Immigration began to increase during the 1870s, when more than twice as many Italians immigrated than during the five previous decades combined.
context_section_description: Italian women who arrived during the period of mass immigration had to adapt to new and unfamiliar social and economic conditions. Mothers, who had the task of raising the children and providing for the welfare of the family, commonly demonstrated great courage and resourcefulness in meeting these obligations, often under adverse living conditions. Their cultural traditions, which placed the highest priority on the family, remained strong as Italian immigrant women adapted to these new circumstances.
  Married women typically avoided factory work and chose home-based economic activities such as dressmaking, taking in boarders, and operating small shops in their homes or neighborhoods. Italian neighborhoods also proved attractive to midwives, women who trained in Italy before coming to America. Many single women were employed in the garment industry as seamstresses, often in unsafe working environments. Many of the 146 who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911 were Italian-American women. Angela Bambace was an 18-year-old Italian American organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in New York who worked to secure better working conditions and shorter hours for women workers in the garment industry.
  The American scene in the 1920s featured a widespread expansion of women's roles, starting with the vote in 1920, and including new standards of education, employment and control of their own sexuality. "Flappers" raised the hemline and lowered the old restrictions in women's fashion. The Italian-American media disapproved. It demanded the holding of the line regarding traditional gender roles in which men controlled their families. Many traditional patriarchal values prevailed among Southern European male immigrants, although some practices like dowry were left behind in Europe. The community spokesmen were shocked at the notion of a woman marking her secret ballot. They ridiculed flappers and proclaimed that feminism was immoral. They idealized an old male model of Italian womanhood. Mussolini was popular with readers and subsidized some papers, so when he expanded the electorate to include some women voting at the local level, the Italian American editorialists applauded him, arguing that the true Italian woman was, above all, a mother and a wife and, therefore, would be reliable as a voter on local matters but only in Italy. Feminist organizations in Italy were ignored, as the editors purposely associated emancipation with Americanism and transformed the debate over women's rights into a defense of the Italian-American community to set its own boundaries and rules. The ethnic papers featured a woman's page that updated readers on the latest fabrics, color combinations, and accessories including hats, shoes, handbags, and jewelry. Food was a major concern, and recipes were presented which adjusted to the availability of ingredients in the American market. Food supplies were limited in Italy by poverty and strict import controls, but abundant in America, so new recipes were needed to take advantage.
  In the second and third generations, opportunities expanded as women were gradually accepted in the workplace and as entrepreneurs. Women also had much better job opportunities because they had a high school or sometimes college education, and were willing to leave the Little Italies and commute to work. During World War II large numbers of Italian American women entered the workforce in factories providing war materiel, while others served as auxiliaries or nurses in the military services.  After the war, Italian American women had much greater freedom in choosing a career, and seeking higher levels of education.  Consequently, the second half of the 20th century was a period in which Italian American women excelled in virtually all fields of endeavor. They were responsible for a significant number of firsts:
  In politics, Geraldine Ferraro was the first woman vice-presidential candidate, Ella Grasso was the first woman elected as a state governor and Nancy Pelosi was the first woman Speaker of the H
caption: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911. The victims were almost exclusively Jewish and Italian female immigrants
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