Educate in order to emancipate: the educational approaches of Ellen Key and Alessandrina Ravizza

The article intends to reconstruct significant aspects about two women, Ellen Key (1849-1926) and Alessandrina Ravizza (1846-1915), who lived in different countries, but contemporaneously. In examining common, but also different aspects between these figures, then the attention will focus on the key role played by them in favor of delinquent and abandoned children, both in phase of theoretical processing and practical action. As has been reported by numerous research on this subject, the battles fought by feminists at the beginning of the twentieth century were intended not only to achieve full recognition of women’s rights, but also to promote a new idea of childhood and the rights associated with this. The hypothesis put forward is that the prominence of women’s movements facilitated a true change in perspective, leading to the recognition of childhood as being in a category of its own, separate from that of adulthood. Claims and struggles waged by feminists, intertwoven with constant action, and this promoted the creation and development of numerous initiatives on behalf of minors that can be considered as the initial core of services dealing with children’s needs.