Tiziana Dal Pra is an Italian feminist activist with extensive pioneering experience in the fight against gender-based violence, particularly honour-based femicides and forced and arranged marriages.
She was among the first in Italy to raise awareness about these phenomena and has developed concrete actions to protect victims while providing specialised training for social workers and operators.
Her work focuses on the complexity of these issues, the role of communities of origin, and supporting women who choose to break free from oppressive family dynamics.
With a strong emphasis on women’s autonomy and rights, she has contributed practical tools for addressing violence and safeguarding lives in refuge settings.
Today she continues to deliver specialised training sessions, collaborating with social cooperatives, anti-violence centres, and institutions to raise awareness and prevent all forms of violence against women.
INTERVIEWER:
First of all: how did your active engagement begin in the cause you are still working on today? And how did it change during Covid, and what impact did it have on your activities?
TIZIANA:
My real activism, my real practice, started with feminism.
I am a woman who began working very early on gender inequality in practical terms. I was already a member of Lotta Continua when I was 15 years old. All of this, within my political background and mixed forms of belonging, evolved later on when, rather late—between the mid and late 1990s—I met migrant women who were starting to become visible. Not like today, but visible in their everyday living spaces. At that time I was living in Imola.
In 1997, after supporting Italian language courses, together with other women—we were 14, including four migrant women—I founded Trama di Terre.
That became the place where I lived for 23 years, every day, where I could practice my idea of feminism and an intercultural gender approach.
What does that mean? It means trying to change both the way migrant women saw society and also transforming the way relationships between migrant and Italian women in the city worked. It was about interaction, not just coexistence.
Over the years, the project expanded a lot. Today I am an intercultural gender trainer, and I continue to work with migrant women. My past still enriches me today, even more than before. In a sense, we have gone backwards and should be doing again many of the things we did 25 years ago.
INTERVIEWER:
And during Covid—did it change your work or approach?
TIZIANA:
I’ve thought about this a lot.
Migrant women were already experiencing isolation before Covid. Many were already confined at home, and communication often had to be mediated, because families or husbands controlled access.
So during Covid, in a way, things did not change dramatically for them.
They were already used to isolation.
For Italian women it was different—they had phones, email, and more autonomy.
But many migrant women were already in conditions where going out was difficult: taking children to school, moving around, basic mobility.
So I think Covid actually reduced already limited freedom.
It created a kind of “semi-equality” in isolation.
Everyone was locked down.
Of course, Covid was also terrible for Italian women.
But in many rural or small-town contexts, migrant women already had very limited mobility.
So in many ways, nothing really changed.
Covid simply made an existing condition universal.
Of course, being locked down with a partner—violent or not—changes things, but we must not reduce migrant women only to victims.
However, in that phase, that was my impression.
Also, activities like baking bread at home or rediscovering domestic life were presented as new for Italians, but for many women they were already normal.
So we must be careful not to simplify everything into violence narratives.
INTERVIEWER:
I heard something similar from Bangladeshi women in my city…
TIZIANA:
Exactly.
They said: “we are always at home,” while their husbands said the same.
So a different perspective emerges.
And the “hour of fresh air” that Italians discovered during Covid was actually everyday life for many migrant women.
This was not really re-elaborated afterwards.
In fact, migrant women are becoming increasingly invisible.
And this worries me a lot.
INTERVIEWER:
Yes, even in media representation they are less and less visible…
TIZIANA:
Yes, they disappear.
At some point, associations, activities… and then silence.
A researcher in Bologna told me something similar: migrant girls or daughters of migrants disappear from the radar.
Boys are more visible if they behave in problematic ways.
But girls simply disappear.
And that is extremely worrying.
Because if they are silent, they do not exist.
Even within educational programs.
And then there is the complexity of Muslim women’s associations: on one side emancipated young women, on the other more closed situations.
There is a strong ambiguity.
And feminism itself is struggling to take clear positions on these issues, often out of fear of being labeled.
INTERVIEWER:
Do you think something changed after Covid and the war?
TIZIANA:
Yes, everything changed.
Priorities, attention, focus.
And I see a deep process of impoverishment.
Not only economic, but human as well.
Even in small towns you see more people in difficulty.
And this generates fear.
Fear leads to closure.
Closure leads to egoism.
It’s a cycle.
Many social activities have also become paid work, which is understandable, but something is lost: the space for free thinking.
I think there is less richness of thought today.
INTERVIEWER:
Do you feel changed after Covid?
TIZIANA:
No, I wouldn’t say so.
It was a difficult period, but also a moment that broke fixed patterns.
I found space for reflection.
My life has never been linear; I always adapt.
So Covid was heavy, but also a moment of rethinking.