La diseguaglianza tra i coniugi. Norme comportamentali e giuridiche, un percorso storico

n Italy, the legal equality of spouses was introduced only in 1975 with the reform of family law. The reasons for this delay are the subject of this paper and can be found in the long survival of the asymmetry between spouses in the institution of patria potestà dating back to Roman law; in the natural ‘inferiority’ of women in the classical matrix, as well as in the Christian tradition that developed a vision of pa- triarchy centered on the obedience of the wife to her husband. These cultural elements were also accepted and reinforced in the early modern age and in the nineteenth centu- ry by secular and ecclesiastical intellectuals, doctors and jurists, who proposed as the only family model, based on the hierarchical relationship of the husband over the wife.