Making Room, Occupying Space. Women Conquering and Desiging Urban Spaces

Women have always been strongly involved in creating environment and living spaces, even without initially being designers because the university was accessible to them very late. They were strong involved in creating a modern environment, and contributing to welfare state, where health and social equipment was a gender response to a modern life. Anyway, the history of architecture remains dominated by Masters and the female presence is almost invisible, even though women's studies have made a large contribution to investigate lives, stories, and professional works. The paper highlights the contribution of women as builders of social and physical spaces from late 19th and focuses on Italian movements of second and third generation feminists. Nowadays feminisms are debating about structural violence, pointing out invisibility of women, are claiming commons, and creating new uses for urban space.