Lidia Poët

Lidia Poët (26 August 1855 – 25 February 1949) was the first modern female Italian lawyer. Her disbarment led to a movement to allow women to practice law and hold public office in Italy.

Career
Born in 1855 in the hamlet of Traverse, Perrero commune, in the Valle Germanasca, she passed her law examinations at the University of Turin, Faculty of Law and received her degree on June 17, 1881. For the following two years, she "attended forensic practice" in the office of a lawyer and assisted at the sessions of the tribunals. She then underwent the theoretical and practical examination of the Order of Advocates of Turin and, approved by 45 of 50 votes, was enrolled in the roll of lawyers (albo degli avvocati) on August 9, 1883.

However, the enrollment of a woman on the roll "did not please" the office of the attorney general (procuratore generale), who entered a complaint with the Court of Appeal of Turin. Despite rejoinders, arguments, and examples of women lawyers in other countries (such as Clara S. Foltz), the attorney general argued that women were forbidden by law and public policy to enter the milizia togata. The Court of Appeal subsequently found that Poët's enrollment was illegal. She appealed to the Supreme Court of Cassation, but the decision of the lower court was confirmed.

Debate on women and the legal profession in Italy
Public debate ensued, with 25 Italian newspapers supporting women's public roles and only three against. Those against made statements such as that the only men who supported women's public roles were themselves unmarried celibates. A teacher at the University of Padua named Taverni interviewed the U.S. Minister to Italy, William Waldorf Astor, and reported that he said "that the public opinion of the Americans was not in favor of the exercise of professions by women, inasmuch as the female physicians, lawyers, etc., practicing in America, do not belong either to the aristocracy of money or to that of intellect." However, Taverni himself favored public lives for women, as it would save the 250,000 unmarriageable Italian women who, if society did not give them a role, would spend their lives as nihilists.

Poët worked in her brother's law office after the Corte Suprema di Cassazione precluded her admission as an advocate to the Turin bar association in 1884. Interestingly, Poët did the work of an advocate even though she could not sign letters or plead in court. When her brother departed for Vichy in France each year, she took over the practice entirely, and when necessary, sought out male colleagues to plead in court on behalf of her clients.

All of this aside, the central questions came down to whether a husband would be liable for his wife's practicing advocacy and whether in the construction of the statutes, the words in the masculine gender were meant to apply to men only. Even as recently as 1996, female lawyers were addressed as "Miss" or "Mrs".

Later life
For the rest of her life, Poët was active in the international women's movement.

Under Law n. 1176 of July 17, 1919, women were allowed to hold certain public offices. It wasn’t until 1920 that Lidia Poët, as a 65-year-old woman, was enlisted in the record of the members of the Council of lawyers and officially recognized as a lawyer, when finally enrolled in the roll of advocates in Turin.

References in popular culture
Lidia Poët's life is stylized in the Netflix TV series The Law According to Lidia Poët and played by Matilda De Angelis.