On September 7, 1908, the following headline appeared for the first time in La Stampa:
“Emma Strada, graduated last Saturday at our Higher Polytechnic Institute with full marks in Civil Engineering. Miss Strada is therefore the first woman engineer in Italy and has only two or three colleagues abroad.”

Emma Strada opened the doors for women into the Italian engineering profession. Her story marks the beginning of a career that challenged the stereotypes and conventions of her time.
After graduating, she began working in her father Ernesto’s firm, an already established professional. From the start, she distinguished herself through her technical competence and dedication, contributing to civil, structural and infrastructural works.

Among her projects were works of national relevance, including the design of a decline tunnel in a mine at Ollomont, in the Aosta Valley, and the construction of the “auto-motor-funicular” railway in Catanzaro, Calabria, where she supervised the construction of a curved and inclined tunnel, including a section beneath the town, connecting Catanzaro to Sala over a distance of 7 km.

Despite her extraordinary expertise, Emma Strada was unable to sign many of her own projects. At the time, women were not permitted to register with professional engineering associations and therefore could not sign their own work – this restriction lifted only in 1923. This lack of formal authorship makes it difficult today to distinguish her individual contribution from the output of the firm led by her father.

For this reason, Emma Strada stands as a striking example of the Matilda effect, the phenomenon in which women’s achievements in technical and scientific fields are undervalued, overlooked, or wrongly attributed to men.
In 1957, together with other professional women, she founded AIDIA – the Italian Association of Women Engineers and Architects in Turin. The association offered women engineers and architects what the profession denied them: visibility, legitimacy and a shared institutional voice. It created an independent network where women could support one another, advocate for their role in science and technical fields, and strengthen cultural and professional ties with similar associations in Italy and abroad.

Through her courage and initiative, Emma Strada helped break gender barriers in civil engineering and STEM fields, paving the way for a new generation of women determined to make their mark in a professional world historically dominated by men.