Page - 14 - in Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies - Conference Proceedings of the 17th STS Conference Graz 2018

1986-1999. Italian feminist elaborations on science and technology as a body of thoughts and practices Italian feminist elaborations on science and technology identify an articulated body of thoughts and practices typically intertwined with each other. Between the mid-1980s and the 1990s, a large part of these studies and practices flowed into one informal but nationally recognized organization, named Coordinamento Nazionale Donne di Scienza (National Coordination of “Women of Science”), which was located in Bologna at the Women's Research and Documentation Center. From 1986 to 1998 more than a hundred of women practicing scientists and science theoreticians used to meet, think together and discuss at the Coordinamento. Among them, several “women and science” groups coming from a number of Italian cities regularly took an active part in it, namely: Gruppo Donne e scienza (Torino); Gruppo donne e scienza (Bologna); Piccolo gruppo romano donne e scienza (Roma). Besides these groups, for a shorter period, until 1992, also members from Ipazia, Comunità scientifica femminile (Ipazia, Female scientific community) from Milano Women Bookstore Collective, were fully involved in the Coordinamento, continuing its path informed by sexual difference thought and practice afterwords (Allegrini 2013). Starting from 2003, a nucleus of these women researchers and science theoreticians established a new women and science group, this time formally organized and based in Roma – the Associazione Donne e Scienza (Women and Science Association), which gathered a significant part of these experiences and prolonged them till nowadays. In order to consider some aspects of this story, which may shed light on my idea previously introduced, I would like to draw specific attention to Coordinamento Nazionale Donne di Scienza (Bologna, 1986-1998) and Ipazia, Comunità scientifica femminile (Milano, 1987-1999), not to emphasize the theoretical-political controversies which led to the already hinted autonomous pathways. These controversies are usually interpreted against the background of a different cultural politics and theoretical conceptualization underpinning Italian feminism of that period – especially, but not exclusively, connected to gender approaches and sexual difference thought/ practice1. Despite the importance of keeping the memory of these disagreements which, I believe, are nevertheless more a sign of political plurality in Italian women's elaboration and practice on science and technology, than an unsolvable conflict among feminist positions, I would like to point to a common trait, easily recognizable in the relational practices that vivified these experiences. Women's relational practices to bridge the gap between feminist thinking S-T from inside/ outside S-T (or between “women expert and non expert”) The Coordinamento Nazionale Donne di Scienza was informed by a relational practice between women reflecting on science-technology from inside science-technology (“women who does science”) and women reflecting on science-technology from outside (“women who thinks science”). Ipazia, Comunità scientifica femminile, especially until 1992, adopted the practice of relationship between “women expert and non-expert in science”. These two practices differed under many aspects, not to mention to a partial disagreement on considering both of them as a political practice or a relational style2. However, in both cases, they reflected the already 1 As often underlined by several participants I interviewed. 2 As sometimes suggested by participants I interviewed. 14