Women's Defense Groups

The Women's Defense Groups (Italian: Gruppi di difesa della donna)[lower-alpha 1] were a women's support organization during the Italian Resistance.

Groups for women’s defense
Abbreviation GDD
Foundation 1943
Founder Italian Communist Party
Dissolution 1945
Purpose Emancipation of women
Members ca. 70.000

History

The groups were created in Milan in November 1943, on the initiative of the Italian Communist Party, with the aim of involving the greatest number of women in resistance activities, regardless of political affiliation. The foundation was the meeting between women of different political backgrounds: the communists Giovanna Barcellona, Lina Fibbi and Caterina Picolato; the socialists Laura Conti and Lina Merlin; the shareholders Elena Dreher and Ada Gobetti, in the women's defense groups, already existing groups converge, organized by women around the Giustizia e Libertà (Justice and Freedom) movement, such as that of Ada Gobetti, or communists, socialists, republicans, catholics, to which joined women without political-ideological training. The groups spread mainly in the center-north, where the costume makes women more ready to act on their own and to have greater civic awareness.[1]

Initially the intent was to make women mainly achieve supporting roles, but soon they played important roles in information, propaganda, orders and ammunition activities as well as participating directly in the armed struggle.[2] Ada Gobetti, among the first, criticized the term "assistance" present in the name[3] and already in 1944 a formulation of the organization more geared to activities to foster the emancipation of women took shape.[4]

In Turin, the GDD were organized above all in factories, in groups of about ten workers, who met in private homes and who were immediately given practical instructions, on how to carry out factory sabotage, on typing, telegraphy and first aid. Soon it was decided to produce a women's newspaper, whose title "Noi Donne" (Our women), was chosen as the title already used in the Spanish and Paris wars in 1937.

In Milan the groups were organized by the three women Irma Brambilla, Iole Radice and Lidia Salvano. The meetings were always held in different places, for prudence, and almost always on Sunday morning. "Impromptu" rallies in the factories are born precisely in this context: a young woman from another area went, during the lunch break, to a factory where some companions had already been warned and there, at the time of the canteen, she held the rally in the shortest possible time and then disappeared.

Movies and documentaries

In 2016, the documentary film entitled Nome di battaglia Donna (Name of the fighting woman) by director Daniele Segre was released with the stories of the direct protagonists still alive who have mainly acted in Piedmont.[5]

Notes
  1. Full name: Gruppi di difesa della donna e per l'assistenza ai combattenti della libertà (Groups for women's defense and for assistance to freedom fighters)

References
  1. Marina Addis Saba, Partigiane. Tutte le donne della resistenza, Milan, Mursia Editore, 1998, pp. 40-50, ISBN 88-425-2299-6.
  2. Gabriella Bonansea, Donne nella resistenza, in Enzo Collotti, Renato Sandri, Fediano Sessi (edited by), Dizionario della Resistenza, Turin, Einaudi, 2000, p. 272.
  3. Patrizia Gabrielli, Il 1946, le donne, la Repubblica, Rome, Donzelli, 2009, p. 45-46.
  4. Franca Pieroni Bortolotti, Le donne della Resistenza antifascista e la questione femminile in Emilia (1943–45), in Donne e Resistenza in Emilia-Romagna, vol. 2, Milan, evangelist, p. 77.
  5. MYmovies.it. "Nome di battaglia donna". MYmovies.it (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-03-30.
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