On March 24, 1947, the Constituent Assembly debated and approved Article 3 of that Constitution of the Italian Republic that would come into force on January 1, 1948: a very important article for Italian women, who had only a year before obtained the right to vote and still found themselves living in a country that was profoundly patriarchal. Thanks to that article, strongly desired by the Constituent Mothers, gender equality entered among the founding principles of the newly formed Republic.

The path to actual equality was long and difficult, and it's still not finished. But in the last three quarters of a century, legislation has changed a great deal in favor of women: from labor guarantees to legal and social protections, from the protection of sexual freedom to new opportunities for access to the political and economic life of the country. The Constitutional Court has played a leading role in this: its jurisprudence and urgings have been followed by the adoption of fundamental reforms in many cases.