What Kind of Health? Mobilisations and Reflections of Italian Working Women on Workplace Health Issues from the 1960s to 1980s

This article offers a preliminary reconstruction of the evolution of Italian women workers’ health activism from the early 1960s to the early 1980s. While trade unions had largely overlooked gender-specific health and safety issues, pioneering activism by the Unione Donne Italiane (UDI – Union of Italian Women) in the early to mid-1960s drew attention to female working conditions. From the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, workers inquiries involving women workers gathered data on physical and mental health, workers’ conditions and the impact of the so-called “double burden” – the combination of wage labour and domestic responsibilities. These inquiries were part of (often successful) campaigns for change. From the mid-1970s, the rise of women’s coordination groups in unions and access to “150-hour courses” reshaped the boundary between public and private spheres. The article traces a significant transformation: the shift from women workers as passive subjects of inquiry to active agents of change. In so doing, it contributes to a more nuanced understanding of labour, gender and health in twentieth-century Italy and underscores the relevance of past struggles in shaping contemporary debates on occupational safety.