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Abstract
Il contributo indaga il lavoro femminile nel Regno di Napoli, mettendone in luce la natura paradossale: centrale per l’economia, ma marginale sul piano giuridico-istituzionale. Attraverso l’analisi di fonti archivistiche – in particolare una relazione del 1806 sulla Terra d’Otranto – emerge come tale lavoro, diffuso negli ambiti domestico, agricolo e manifatturiero, restasse privo di piena formalizzazione giuridica, disciplinato piuttosto da un sistema implicito fondato su consuetudini e strutture patriarcali. La relazione analizzata testimonia, nel contesto delle riforme napoleoniche, un primo passo verso la visibilità amministrativa del lavoro femminile, riconosciuto come risorsa produttiva essenziale ma non pienamente tutelato sul piano giuridico.
Parole chiave: Lavoro femminile, Mezzogiorno, istruzione
This paper focuses on women’s work in the Kingdom of Naples, highlighting its paradoxical nature: structurally central to the economy, yet marginal in legal and institutional terms. Through a historicallegal approach and the analysis of archival sources – in particular an 1806 report on the Terra d’Otranto – it emerges that women’s work was widespread in the domestic, agricultural and manufacturing sectors, whilst remaining situated in a regulatory ‘grey area’, lacking full formal recognition. The study highlights how this invisibility does not correspond to an absence of regulation, but to an implicit discipline, founded on customs and patriarchal structures that limited women’s legal autonomy. The report analysed bears witness, in the context of the Napoleonic reforms, to an initial step towards the administrative visibility of women’s labour, recognised as an essential productive resource, though without translating into effective legal recognition. What emerges is a picture characterised by a persistent tension between economic centrality and regulatory marginality, in which women’s labour appears as a fundamental resource but one that is not fully institutionalised. This contribution thus invites us to rethink the legal categories of labour in the light of historical practices that have long remained ‘under the lamp’—visible but largely overlooked.
Keywords: Women’s employment, Southern Italy, education