European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

As soon as I got home I told my father I didn’t want to work at home anymore.

I wanted to shape my own life, find a job and become self-sufficient.

At home I felt repressed. My father agreed.

I started working, setting up women sections and the feminist movement.

I studied in a party school and was sent to take care of trade-unions.

I started to get involved in the movement for the protection of women’s rights.

I had decided I would work for all those who had died, to accomplish what they had hoped for.

Their dreams were also mine.

We wanted a few simple things:

a job, a chance to support our families properly, the right to send our children to school,

to live in a democratic society, maintain our individual values and at the same time defend the rights of the community.

So as soon as I started working for the party, I set up women sections, even if I wasn’t particularly skilled.

Women were all coming from the same background I came from.

We had to discuss together about our own issues, learn to vote, identify our problems and develop our demands.

If we discussed with men, women would not speak out.

Having a women-only group allowed us to develop those issues and build up our claims.

After the war there was dramatic poverty. The children were on the street.

The first thing I recommended was to set up a nursery school. We had one, but it was too small for all the children.

In Bainsizza street, with all the working-class housing, a multitude of kids spent the whole day on the streets waiting for their mother to come back from work.

They ate only at breakfast and dinner, hardly at lunch. Their families didn’t have enough money for another meal.