Even though it is one of the longest-lasting movements in history, the explosion of liberty and creativity in seventies feminism has been a constant source of inspiration to successive currents, strongly boosted after the mass mobilisation of 8th March 2019. This “revolution without a model” (Fina Birulés, echoing Françoise Collin) has contributed unprecedented richness and plurality, in recent decades stamping a new way of thinking and acting in the public sphere, in the shared, common world, as a movement for socio-political, scientific, artistic and cultural change.

If the debate on these crucial issues goes under the title of Variations on Gender, this is because feminist propositions are not limited to a single discourse, even though all of them aim at the liberation of the subject, at baring an identity hitherto conditioned and repressed (Foucault). We are talking about a deconstruction without which freedom of sexual choice, qualitative development of the concept of gender and self-affirmation not only as an identity but as a creative force are not viable.

Gender studies, post-colonial thought and artistic and scientific practice have helped to place the body at the centre of debate from a range of standpoints, and to broaden the rights and freedoms linked to it. The body takes on special importance as a political cultural space per se in terms of identity, but also in terms of desire, violence and survival as a species. We will have the feminist view from a range of positions and propositions, representing advanced, innovative ideas about feminism and gender.