Italian Working Men's Masculinities in the Latter Half of the Twentieth Century

The article analyzes the representation of industrial workers in Italy during the second half of the twentieth century, with a specific focus on their masculinity. It highlights two overlapping public images, that of the man and the industrial worker, because the representation of the industrial worker as a man derives from the belief that work is what defined manhood. Both representations are studied, comparing the public images of factories and industrial workers with their self-representations in movies, photographs, novels, and autobiographical accounts. The essay explores the connection between the decline of industrial work from the 1970s and the transformation of manliness in the same period, under the influence both of feminism and, more generally, changing social values. During this period male identity was redefined: it no longer stems from work but from a new body-centered self-awareness.