The project embraced a wide variety of research including online databases, archives and libraries in Italy, Germany, and Great Britain. Analysis was carried out on national statistics, surveys, and enquiries into the distribution of marriage, divorce, fertility, and abortion in the respective national populations distinguished by gender and from a long term perspective. These were compared with statistical service data from France, England, and Wales, making it possible to identify shared trends and national traits within the context of a general European transformation expressed in each country on a different timescale. The reception of the revolutionary studies by the American biologist Alfred Kinsey in Italy and Western Germany in the late 1960s, combined with the impact of media and consumption on the popularization of the theme of sexuality and its representation, helped redefine the public inception of the forms, concepts, and idioms of female sexuality, releasing a desire for change that had been frustrated up until the Second World War. An examination of magazines aimed at women, young people, intellectuals, political debate, and for middle and working class families in both countries revealed distinct characteristics and mechanisms of reconceptualization of the female body and sexuality according to social position and role, generation, and gender. Advertising, consumption, and images played a decisive role in this process of reconceptualization. Consultation of egodocuments preserved at the National Diary Archive of Pieve Santo Stefano in Italy, and of Emmendingen in Germany, the archives of the Feminist Documentation and Information Centre (Frauenforschungs-, Bildungs- und Informationszentrum, or FFBIZ), and the Feminist Women's Health Centre (Feministisches Frauengesundheitszentrum, or FFGZ), literature from agencies for sexual counselling like the Association for Demographic Education (AIED) in Italy, and Pro Familia in West Germany, allowed an assessment of the impact of the conceptual paradigm shift in society. The sources suggest that men and women born in the 1950s showed the largest degree of modification in sexual behaviour and habits, expressed in different ways according to gender, geography, and social role. There were similarities between the populations of the two countries, suggesting that there were particular reasons and opportunities for change specific to this period.
During the 1960s and 1970s female sexuality underwent a radical reconception in both Italy and Germany. The most common and widely shared current conceptions can be traced back to this turning point. The social consequences of the reconception were very contradictory and diversified according to the generation and area of the country involved, but with consequences that influenced attitudes and trends across all of society of both countries.
