Teresa Noce

Teresa Noce
Member of the Chamber of Deputies
In office 8 May 1948 – 11 June 1958
Constituency	Brescia
Member of theConstituent Assembly
In office 25 June 1946 – 31 January 1948
Constituency	Parma
Personal details
Born	29 July 1900 Turin,Italy
Died	22 January 1980(1980-01-22)(aged 79) Bologna,Italy
Political party	Italian Communist Party
Profession	Labor leader, journalist, politician

Teresa Noce(29 July 1900 – 22 January 1980)was an Italian labor leader, activist, journalist and feminist. She served as a parliamentary deputy and advocated broad social legislation benefiting mothers.

Biography

Teresa Noce was born inTurin,Italy on 29 July 1900 to an unmarried, working-class mother. She started working as a turner in the localFiat Brevettifactory at the age of ten. By the age of 12, she was involved in the workers' union and joined demonstrations. As a journalist she wrote forIl Grido del Popolo(The People's Cry) andOrdine Nuovefrom 1914 to 1917. She protested when Italy entered World War I in 1915 and joined the Young Socialist movement in 1919.

Following the rise of Mussolini and the Fascists, Noce left the Socialists, becoming a founding member of theItalian Communist Party(PCI) in 1921. After the Communist and Socialist parties were outlawed in 1925, she continued organizing workers illegally. During the 1920s, she oversaw the Communist Youth Federation and their periodicalLa voce della gioventù. She met PCI functionary Luigi Longo, whom she married in 1926. The two emigrated first to Moscow then to Paris. Noce organized a strike of rice workers in the spring of 1934. She then fled to Paris and surfaced as a leading political figure among the Italian exile community. As editor ofIl Grido del Popolo,Noce called for improved labor conditions for the working class and for abolition the Special Tribunals used to imprison anti-Fascists. She also led a campaign on behalf of imprisoned PCI leaderAntonio Gramscithat resulted in mass demonstrations in Paris.

She edited the anti-fascist periodicalLa voce della donnein 1934. In 1936, she travelled to Spain to see theSpanish Civil War.She penned several pamphlets reporting and appealing on behalf of the Spanish Republicans. After France surrendered to Nazi Germany in 1940, Noce remained there, organizing cells among the Italian exile community in Paris. She led an effective partisan unit as a member of the underground and adopted thenom de guerreEstella.Though she avoided arrest on a number of occasions, she was eventually arrested and deported toRavensbrück,the German concentration camp for women. She was freed in the spring of 1945 and returned to Italy.

In 1947, Noce was elected as the general secretary of theItalian Federation of Textile Workers,becoming the first woman to lead a major Italian industrial trade union. She served until 1955, when she became the general secretary of the Trade Union International of Textile and Clothing Workers, and then as president of its successor, theTrade Union International of Textile, Leather and Fur Workers Unions.

In Italy Noce was elected to the Central Committee of the PCI. She was then elected to the Italian Parliament and was appointed general secretary of the textile workers union, where she founded the publicationLa voce dei tessili.In 1951 she was one of two dissenting votes in the Communist leadership against a proposal made by dictatorJoseph Stalin.

Noce was aligned with the Unione Donne Italiane (Italian Women's Union). She and other women of the Italian Parliament campaigned for comprehensive maternity legislation. They secured victory in 1950 with a law protecting working mothers, providing for children of infants and giving five months of paid leave for pregnant women.

Noce died in Bologna on 22 January 1980.

Electoral history

Election	House	Constituency	Party		Votes	Result
1946	Constituent Assembly	Parma–Modena–Piacenza–Reggio Emilia		PCI	47,219	YElected
1948	Chamber of Deputies	Brescia–Bergamo		FDP	34,445	YElected
1953	Chamber of Deputies	Brescia–Bergamo		PCI	13,877	YElected

Selected publications

• Nuestros hermanos, los internacionales(1937)
• Tra gli eroi ed i martiri della liberta(1937)
• Gioventù senza sole(1938)
• Teruel martirio e liberazione di un popolo!(1939)
• Ma domani fara giorno(1952)
• Rivoluzionaria professional(1974)
• Vivere in piedi(1978)
• Estella: Autobiographie einer italienischen Revolutionärin(1981)

Further reading

• Betti, E., Migliucci, D. (2023). Teresa Noce (1900–1980): A Communist “Professional Revolutionary” in Twentieth-Century Italy. In: de Haan, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Communist Women Activists around the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13127-1_8