The First World War unsettled not just the geopolitical arrangement of a large part of Europe, but also previously held gender roles and family relations. With the conflict’s end, the bordering cities of Fiume and Sušak went through a long transition characterised by administrative instability and economic uncertainty, as well as by political and national tensions, before being integrated into the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, respectively. Drawing on available sources in both Italian and Croatian, this article analyses the case study of a border area in order to investigate women’s presence in the public sphere, considering both their political participation — to the extent this was allowed by the different forms of suffrage — and their associationism within political and philanthropic organisations. Moreover, in order to trace the reactions triggered by women’s activism, the article examines gender representations in the local press, which was mostly linked to the main conflicting political factions and dominated by male journalists.