Abstract
The particular intensity of Italy's Cold War rivalries was subverted, critiqued, and even outright rejected by a coalition of women from both Left and Right. These women, brought together by their participation in the antifascist Resistance and held together by a particular vision of women's equal citizenship as the only guarantee of democracy in Italy, presented an ideal image of womanhood to the public endorsing both a Christian inspiration and a progressive militancy. Indeed, this conviction more accurately reflected the average Italian voter's own identity, in which Catholicism and communism were both thoroughly hybridised in local culture; and the real, if strategically complex, commitment in both mass parties' hierarchies to remain loyal to the new constitution rather than acquiesce to the covert sabotage constantly suggested to them by their interlocutors in Moscow or Washington. These women's success is a testament to an important women's movement before neofeminism, all too often forgotten; but it is also an important confirmation of our evolving understanding of the real significance of the Cold War as an interplay of forces which influenced, but could not determine, Italian and other local outcomes.
Published Version
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