Italy's first female lawyer: who is Lidia Poët?

When she is barred from practicing law on the grounds that “If God wanted you to be a lawyer, she wouldn't have made you a woman,” she stubbornly fights against the court's decision.

Lidia Poët (26 August 1855 in – 25 February 1949) was the first modern female Italian lawyer. Her disbarring led to a movement to allow women to practice law and hold public office in Italy.

Summary of your life

Lidia Poet is a lawyer in Italy in the 19th century. But it was not right for women to be involved in these works in those years. Lidia, who willingly studied to be a lawyer, saw the same reaction from her family. That's why she left her family and started to build a new life for herself. Lidia Poet is not preferred because she is a female lawyer. That's why, in her life where she lives apart from her family, cracks begin. She then chooses to go to her older brother's side and she handles cases alongside him. Being in lawsuits makes people in the bar uncomfortable. An appeal is filed against Lidia, leading to her being removed from the list. She further appeals this decision, but the court once again decides that she will not be legally allowed to practice as a lawyer. Despite these events, Lidia never loses hope. She is in cases, albeit undercover.

Detail

Turin at the end of the 19th century... just after the unification of the Italian political union under the leadership of Garibaldi. Long before the legal rights that women had to wait until the end of the Second World War... A time when they were forced to live in social roles and sewn corsets, and a name that is one of the symbols of that era... Italy's first female lawyer, Lidia Poet's inspiring story emerges from dusty shelves.

The legal battle of Lidia Poet, which opened with the mysterious death of a ballerina in 1883, begins when she is hired to investigate this case as a "cheaper" lawyer because she is a woman. But there is a much more important problem than the resolution of the case. In the Turin bar, where she made her mark as a new lawyer, no one thinks that Poet is "sufficient" to do the job. Despite graduating from the university, she is believed to be unqualified to do this job just because she is a woman and because of her “physical weaknesses” and she is disbarred from the bar.

WOMEN'S STRUGGLE

From this moment on, Poet interestingly engages in a major challenge as an educated and intellectual woman belonging to a Waldense family, a proto-Protestant tradition long before the Protestant Reformation. And she becomes one of the most important figures of the women's movement until the age of 65 when she is legally accepted as a lawyer for the first time. Poet, who started to work in the law firm of her older brother Enrico in order to be able to do her job, starts to solve a series of cases with the journalist Jacopo, whom she met after a while.

Poet, who shines with her sharp tongue, humor, stubbornness, anger, and the fire that burns for her profession, becomes the name of a woman's rightful and honorable rebellion.