Precision assembly department — Pavia

Pavia was, alongside Milan and Florence, one of Italy's poles of thermionic-valve and cathode-ray-tube manufacture: Fivre — later Magneti Marelli — operated here from 1932 to 2003, and together with Necchi and Snia Viscosa gave the city its industrial profile.

By 1936 the Fivre plant in Pavia was producing over 900,000 radio valves a year against a national demand of 800,000 — a single hall, with its almost entirely female workforce, supplied the whole of Italy's domestic radio market.

Italy's 20th-century electrical and electromechanical factories preferred female labour for fine-assembly tasks: small parts, repetition, lower wages. 'Women's dexterity' was first of all a cost argument.

The most serious thing is the exhaustion that makes one forget the very reason for living — and, in the long run, ends up making one forget even the reason to feel outrage.