Teresa Nose, Activist
“The working women have demonstrated emphatically that they will & can fight against fascism, against exploitation. Again & again they have defied fascism; in innumerable incidents of the class struggle, of the protest movements, of the strikes & demonstrations, they have forced the exploiters to retreat. These day-to-day struggles of the working women must be linked up with the struggle against war. The demands of the working women, especially the demand for equal pay, for equal work, must be supported by the whole of the toiling masses, & working men and women must join their efforts in the struggle to prevent the war which is being prepared by fascism.” Womens rights and workers' rights activist and journalist Teresa Noce wrote in 1934.
She was born on July 29, 1900. At twelve, she was already unionizing her fellow workers & demonstrating. She protested when Italy joined WWI & continued to organize workers when it became illegal in 1925. She advocated for better labor conditions for the working class and for abolition of the Special Tribunals used to imprison anti-Fascists. She immigrated to Paris where she continued to organize workers and when France fell to the Nazis she remained organizing effective cells against the Nazis, adopting the nom de guerre Estella, evading numerous arrest attempts until she was finally captured and sent to a concentration camp. She was freed in 1945 and returned to Italy. She was elected the general secretary of the Italian Federation of Textile Workers in 1947, becoming the first woman to lead a major Italian trade union. She was elected to Italian parliament. There she fought for laws to protect working mothers including paid maternity leave and in 1950 successfully passed comprehensive laws that not only provided paid maternity leave, two months before and three months after birth, but also provided other provisions for mothers with children under one year.