After the establishment of Women’s Technical Institutes, a debate began about the inadequacy of the technical education reserved for women, still underdeveloped and stereotyped. The action of feminine associationism, in particular of Union of Women in Italy (UDI), had a relevant role, during the 1950s and 1960s, for reaching a technical-professional education in line with technological change, offering new opportunities for qualified employment to women.
In the 1960s, the issue of the underrepresentation of girls in education, in connection with the secondary role of women in workforce, was also addressed internationally by the OECD and UNESCO. By the early 1950s only 42 (0,2%) out of 24.000 women were enrolled in industrial technical institutes nationwide. But by the early 1970s their number had risen to 6.300 (2,5%) out of 255.000, with growth spurts of 70% in some regions. Between the 1960s and 1970s women benefitted from the increased mass schooling, favoured by the Reform of Middle School in 1962. In this context we can find the pilot project of the Women’s Technical Industrial Institute of Bologna, where some of the first “mosche bianche della tecnica” were enrolled.
Between the 1960s and the 1970s in Emilia-Romagna, right next to Lombardia and Veneto, an exponential increase of women with a technical-industrial degree was registered. Despite the reform of technical and industrial education having raised the number of specializations available to individual institutes to 29, the most chosen curricula in the early 1960s included mechanics, electrical engineering, and chemistry.