Family law, property rights and women's wealth (Milan, Italy, 19th century)

The work aims at analising the way the legal context shaped female wealth holding in Mediterranean settings. In particular, it focuses on propertied women who lived in Milan in the first decades after the Unification. Probate records reveal that notwithstanding legal provisions assuring women equal rights to property than men, they were by far poorer. And this was mainly because culture and custum kept women away from the financial and economic arena and parents privileged male sons in their inheritance practices as well.