Protagonists in Italy and around the world

The first female guest on the Collegio Nuovo stage of the Main Lecture Hall appears in the year of inauguration of the cultural activity of the College (1979-80), with a lecture on prevention in Neonatology: it was the prof. Francesca Severi(University of Pavia), followed two years later by prof. Adriana Della Casa (University of Genoa) with the first speech given by a professor in the humanistic-literary field.

We had to wait until 1985 to see female representation on the lecture hall's stage grow. And what women that year: the philologist and writer Maria Corti, "mother" of the Manuscript Center of the University of Pavia and art historian Rossana Bossaglia.
The following year it was the turn of a writer like Lalla Romano, among the first of a precious group that, passing by Alda Merini and Simonetta Agnello Hornby, will come to Michela Murgia, Dacia Maraini and Melania Mazzucco and to publishers like Inge Feltrinelli.

With the new millennium the College also begins to propose more specific seminars dedicated to female empowerment. With the turn of the Presidency of the Conference of Italian University Colleges of Merit and with the participation in the Executive Committee in the Women's Education Worldwide network of women's colleges, various initiatives were promoted, of common reflection both at an institutional level and through the direct involvement of students. Seminars were thus offered at Dubai Women's College, Mount Holyoke e Smith Collegein the United States, at Women's College – University of Sydney, at China Women's University in Beijing and, more recently, at Ochanomizu University with which the College also participates in the Global International Dialogue project, including institutions from Peru to Korea, from the United States to Canada.

Thanks to figures like the Nobel Rita Levi-Montalcini, and to consultants, scholars and opinion leaders such as Maria Cristina Bombelli and Paola Profeta, Roger Abravanel, Maurizio Ferrera, Maria Latella and Barbara Stefanelli, political representatives and advisors such as Lella Golfo, Barbara Pollastrini, and Cristina Molinari, Collegio Nuovo always focuses on female empowerment. And we also did it through networks: from "Valore D" (Women Value) to Marisa Bellisario Foundation, from AIDDA to "Pari o Dispare", with the goal of a shared leadership, men and women, together.

More recently the College, in addition to being among the bodies promoting the initiative "100Experts”, entered the network STEAMiamocilaunched by Assolombarda to promote the presence of women also in areas where STEM skills are strategically played out (including the "A" for "Art" in the acronym, to encompass every aspect of knowledge and expressiveness). In consideration of the high percentage of students in the biomedical area, Collegio Nuovo collaborates regularly for career orientation meetings with the Italian Association of Women Doctors – Pavia Section.

At the same time, the presence of women scientists and other professional fields has grown on the stage of the Aula Magna: from the first female director of CERN, Fabiola Gianotti to the Senator and researcher Elena Cattaneo, from female entrepreneurs Diana Bracco and Marina Salamon to the Registrar of the International Criminal Court Silvana Arbia and to the prefect Annamaria Cancellieri, up to the Paralympic champion Giusy Versace.