Women in Italian neorealism

Filmic representations of women have developed in tandem with changing historical and socio-cultural influences. Italian neorealism was a movement that, through art and film, attempted to "[recover] the reality of Italy"^[1] for an Italian society that was disillusioned by the propaganda of fascism. Representations of women in this era were influenced heavily by the suffrage movement and changing socio-political awareness of gender rights. The tension of this transitional era created a spectrum of female representation in film, where female characters were written to acquiesce, or more commonly reject, the societal standards imposed on the women of the age. Italian neorealists, with their characteristic use of realism and thematic-driven narrative, used their medium to explore these established ideals of gender and produce a number of filmic representations of women.