Red feminists: communist women activists and reproductive rights struggles in post-1968 Italy and Slovenia

In 1974, Socialist Yugoslavia became the first country to constitutionalize abortion rights as part of a host of economic, health and social infrastructure measures to foster women’s reproductive autonomy.

Across the border in Italy, communist activists were a central cog in the grassroots campaign to decriminalize abortion in 1978 but stressed that society and the state had to assure the material conditions for women’s right to choose.

Based on archival sources and oral history interviews, “Red feminists: communist women activists and reproductive rights struggles in post-1968 Italy and Slovenia” challenges stereotypes of the party woman to reveal a forgotten framework of engagement for reproductive rights that can illuminate present debates.

It employs a historical, political and gender lens to reconstruct 1) communist women’s comprehensive understanding of reproductive autonomy and 2) ability to weave together different political subjects and spaces towards that goal on both sides of the Cold War divide.

Hosted by Ljubljana’s Institute of Contemporary History with a secondment at the University of Bologna, RedFem examines communist women’s role in the constitutionalization of reproductive rights in Socialist Slovenia (1973-4) – a key component of the Yugoslav case – and in the campaign for legal abortion in Italy, with a focus on the ‘red heartland’ of Emilia-Romagna (1974-8).

The grant builds on my prior work on the interweaving of communism and feminism in Italy and beyond after 1968, expanding my scope into Slovenia and ex-Yugoslavia.

Training in oral history and insight into the regional (Emilia-Romagna) and local (Ljubljana; Bologna) scales add new layers to my analysis.

Ultimately, the project aims to provide a counterbalance to a rights and choice-centered debate on abortion which often fails to consider the broader social and political conditions indispensable for the exercise of reproductive freedoms, constituting a resource for contemporary feminisms.