‘Wandering Thoughts’; The Writing Experience of Working‐Class Housewives in 1970s Milan

Abstract

This article focuses on the writing experiments conducted by a group of Milanese working-class housewives in the second half of the 1970s. This initiative developed in the framework of an innovative trade union project and particularly thanks to the support of women unionists who gave birth to what has been called 'labour feminism', an attempt to permeate trade unions' traditional politics with a new awareness of gender inequalities. Absent from historiography thus far, the experience of these women appears to be unique, at least in Italy. It also proved to be particularly telling in the context of second-wave women's movements, especially in terms of intersections among relevant analytical axes such as the influence of feminism over working-class organisations, elaborations on the dichotomy 'care work/paid work', the development of adult education and counter-culture attempts, as well as critiques of knowledge-building processes.In this article I will tackle such questions first by giving an overview of the theoretical notions that frame the interpretation of this topic. Second, I delineate the context in which the women's experience developed. Following this, I explore the act of writing as a transformative feminist practice, by focusing on one of the core participants. Finally, I elaborate on the main issues raised by this experiment of alternative feminist culture.As neatly argued by Anna Rossi Doria, in Italy, 1970s feminism has been overlooked by historians for a long time. 1 Many feminist scholars who entered academia during that particular period, themselves participants in the women's movement, often opted not to engage with this still contentious subject. This attitude has only recently and slowly begun to be overcome, together with a tendency to focus on 'radical collectives' while leaving aside other expressions of feminist commitment, which are too often hastily dismissed as 'moderate paradigms'. 2 One of these 'moderate paradigms' is labour feminism, whose protagonists were women unionists. 3 Indeed, at the time,