Abstract
This chapter presents the history of the 1950 law for the protection of working mothers. The campaign was led by two MPs—Teresa Noce, a Communist, and Maria Federici, a Christian Democrat. Once passed, the law guaranteed a lengthy paid maternity leave as well as requiring employers to provide child care and nursing facilities for working mothers. It was a victory for a women’s rights movement characterized by cooperation across Cold War ideological lines; yet the chapter also explores the ways that seeking unity around the Italian figure of “la mamma” as a primary identity for women may have limited their citizenship. Tambor provides a dual portrait: of successful uses of maternalist politics for women’s rights, and of the ambivalent consequences of politicizing maternity.
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Notes
- 1.
“In pictures: MEP Licia Ronzulli’s daughter Vittoria in Strasbourg parliament,” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/10461357/In-pictures-MEP-Licia-Ronzullis-daughter-Vittoria-in-Strasbourg-parliament.html.
- 2.
Ronzulli quoted in Jane Martinson, “A High Five to Licia Ronzulli for Her Stance on Children in the Workplace,” The Guardian, 24 October 2012. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/high-five-licia-ronzulli-children-workplace.
- 3.
Noce, Rivoluzionaria professionale, p. 409.
- 4.
Tambor, The Lost Wave; see also Tambor, “Red Saints.” My treatment of citizenship as gendered and as composed of rights and duties (or privileges and obligations), in which women have more often achieved citizenship conceived as duty, is indebted in particular to Linda Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies. See also Canning, Gender History in Practice.
- 5.
D’Amelia, La mamma.
- 6.
Important works analysing the “war between the sexes” of this period include Higonnet et al., eds., Behind the Lines; Hagemann and Schüler-Springorum (eds), Home/Front; Roberts, Civilization without Sexes; and de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women; see also Canning, Gender History in Practice, pp. 42–59.
- 7.
The decree granting women the right to vote was the Decreto legislativo luogotenenziale n. 23 del 1 febbraio 1945, “Estensione alle donne del diritto di voto,” passed by the Bonomi government. See Rossi-Doria, Diventare cittadine, pp. 20–26; Gaiotti de Biase, “The Impact of Women’s Political and Social Activity in Postwar Italy,” p. 221.
- 8.
O’Hare McCormick, “Bulldozer and the Woman with a Broom,” New York Times, 29 March 1945.
- 9.
Quoted in Laville, Cold War Women, p. 56.
- 10.
Pojmann, Italian Women and International Cold War Politics. See also Gabrielli, Il club delle virtuose; Michetti et al., Udi: laboratorio di politica delle donne; Ascoli, “L’Udi tra emancipazione e liberazione”; Taricone, ll Centro italiano femminile; Dau Novelli, Donne del nostro tempo.
- 11.
Federici, “L’Evoluzione socio-giuridica della donna alla costituente,” p. 122; Addis Saba et al., Alle origini della Repubblica: Donne e Costituente.
- 12.
Costitutuzione della Repubblica Italiana, Art. 37.
- 13.
Noce et al., “Relazioni su Garanzie economico-sociali per l’assistenza della famiglia.” The texts of these four women’s speeches during the 10 May 1947 assembly meeting are reproduced under the chapter title “Titolo III: Rapporti economici (Discussione artt. 30–34)” in Morelli, Le donne della Costituente, pp. 126–37. See also Morelli, “Le madri della Costituzione,” p. 401.
- 14.
Tambor, The Lost Wave; Odorisio et al., Donna o cosa?; Sarogni, La donna italiana; Taricone and De Leo, Le donne in Italia: Diritti civili e politici.
- 15.
Noce, Rivoluzionaria professionale; Noce, Vivere in piedi.
- 16.
On the struggle of the women’s associations to achieve autonomy from male dominance that treated them as mere auxiliaries to party and Vatican lines, see Tambor, The Lost Wave, pp. 40–44; Pojmann, Italian Women and International Cold War Politics; Sanfilippo, Pane, amore e politica; Spano and Camarlinghi, La questione femminile nella politica del P.C.I., p. 203; Ferrari, “Contested Foundations.”
- 17.
Willson, “Saints and Heroines,” p. 195. For the concept of “maternage di massa,” see Bravo and Bruzzone, In guerra senza armi, pp. 66–76; Bravo, “Guerra e mutamenti nelle strutture di genere.”
- 18.
Willson, “Saints and Heroines”; see also Tambor, Lost Wave, pp. 32–38 and notes.
- 19.
“Hai molti figli, sei grassa e hai i capelli lunghi. Una dirigente delle donne dev’essere così,” cited in Mafai, L’apprendistato della politica, p. 147. See also Casalini, Famiglie comuniste.
- 20.
Ombra, Donne manifeste, pp. 46, 129; Ventresca, From Fascism to Democracy, pp. 210–11.
- 21.
See her memoirs: Noce, Rivoluzionaria professionale; Noce, Vivere in piedi. See also Boneschi, Di testa loro, p. 167.
- 22.
Ladd-Taylor, “Mother-Worship/Mother-Blame,” p. 663.
- 23.
Mistry, The United States, Italy and the Origins of Cold War, pp. 98–104; Brogi, A Question of Self-Esteem, pp. 26–29.
- 24.
Bellassai, La legge del desiderio; Bellassai, La morale comunista.
- 25.
Scaraffia, “‘Christianity Has Liberated Her,” p. 276.
- 26.
Pope Pius XII, “Address to Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession,” http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=3462&CFID=103675889&CFTOKEN=26566144. The pope gave the speech in essentially the same form to the Italian Catholic Union of Midwives 29 October 1951, and 26 November 1951 to the National Congress of the Family Front and the Association of Large Families, National Catholic Welfare Conference, Washington, DC.
- 27.
“La donna è la casa, e la casa è il mondo … e la partecipazione della donna alla vita politica si giustifica in quanto ha il compito precipuo di render più efficace la sua stessa missione di sposa e di madre.” Mafai, L’apprendistato della politica, p. 111.
- 28.
Atti Parlamentari. Consulta Nazionale, Assemblea Plenaria, VI. Seduta di 1 ottobre 1945, p. 121.
- 29.
Gaiotti de Biase, “The Impact of Women’s Political and Social Activity,” p. 229; Mafai, L’apprendistato della politica, pp. 66–67. The most famous of Togliatti’s expositions of the PCI’s link between emancipation and democracy was made to the first women’s conference of his party in June 1945: see Palmiro Togliatti, “L’emancipazione della donna.”
- 30.
Judt, Postwar, p. 338 n12, points out that in 1957 less than 2 per cent of Italian households had refrigerators. See also Willson, Women in Twentieth-Century Italy, p. 121.
- 31.
Bini et al., “Genere, consumi, comportamenti negli anni cinquanta,” pp. 8–9.
- 32.
On housewives’ pensions, see Taricone, Il Centro italiano femminile, pp. 99–117; Pojmann, Italian Women and International Cold War Politics, pp. 46–47.
- 33.
On the history of this protective line of thought, and how social citizenship was characteristically presented as the justifying base of political citizenship for women by maternalism, see Bock and Thane, Maternity and Gender Policies; Koven and Michel, Mothers of a New World.
- 34.
Willson, Women in Twentieth-Century Italy, pp. 105, 112–13; Bravo, “Simboli del materno”; Buttafuoco, “Motherhood as a political strategy.”
- 35.
Weber, “Italy,” pp. 191–92; Piccone Stella, La prima generazione, table p. 98; Meyer, Sex and Power, p. 40.
- 36.
Judt, Postwar, p. 330; Willson, Women in Twentieth-Century Italy, pp. 120–22.
- 37.
Canning, Gender History in Practice, pp. 81ff.
- 38.
UDI, Maternità 1948/1, Udi centro, “Campagna per la tutela della maternità, relazione regione per regione,” 25 settembre 1948. On festivals and other practices of Italy’s political subcultures, see Gundle, Between Hollywood and Moscow.
- 39.
“Tutela delle lavoratrici madri,” Bollettino di attività del Cif, no. 18, June 1948, special insert; quoted in Pojmann, Italian Women and International Cold War Politics, pp. 59–60, n. 54, 55.
- 40.
Atti parlamentari, seduta antimeridiana 27 giugno 1950, p. 20093.
- 41.
Ibid., pp. 20080, 20084.
- 42.
Ibid., pp. 20092–93, 20086.
- 43.
Ibid., p. 20889.
- 44.
See, for example, Claire Cain Miller, “When Family-Friendly Policies Backfire,” New York Times, 26 May 2015. Revisions and additional laws included the following: in 1954 Maria Maddalena Rossi proposed a bill extending protection of working mothers to farm families; in October 1955 Adele Bei tried to impose the universal enforcement of the Noce law on all employers; and in 1958 a law was passed which regulated work and leave for piece-workers at home. In 1971 law number 1204 of 30 December, “Tutela delle lavoratrici madri,” extended maternity benefits to all Italian working women and extended the leave that could be taken to a full year, and law number 1044 of 6 December 1971 created a national network of public daycare/preschool centres, leading to the final dissolution of ONMI in 1975. In 1977, Tina Anselmi pushed through a law that affirmed the direct responsibility of fathers as primary caregivers and provided for alternation of absences between father and mother to care for a child. Spano and Camarlinghi, La questione femminile nella politica del P.C.I., pp. 188–89; Selvaggio, Desiderio e diritto di cittadinanza, p. 47; Michetti et al., Udi: laboratorio di politica delle donne, p. 223; Gaiotti de Biase, Questione femminile e femminismo, p. 58. On the continuing defiance of these laws, see Boneschi, Santa pazienza, p. 333.
- 45.
Taricone, Il Centro italiano femminile, p. 157. The law which addressed this problem was Legge 9 gennaio 1963, n. 7 “Divieto di licenziamento delle lavoratrici per causa di matrimonio.”
- 46.
Noce, Rivoluzionaria professionale, preface, pp. 47–48.
- 47.
Salvati, “Behind the Cold War,” pp. 564–65.
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Tambor, M. (2018). Mothers, Workers, Citizens: Teresa Noce and the Parliamentary Politics of Motherhood. In: Morris, P., Willson, P. (eds) La Mamma. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54256-4_3
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