Non Una di Meno represents a new feminist and transfeminist movement in Italy that has been taking to the streets for 8 years, filling the squares with millions of women, and that has been able to give a new voice to the extremely radical, complex and varied history of Italian feminism in the last century, updating old slogans such as that of starting from oneself and finding in some analyses of Marxist feminism the key to reading the crisis of capitalist modernity in which we live today.
What is Non Una di Meno and how is it organized?
Non Una di Meno is a feminist and transfeminist network born in Italy in 2016, in response to the cry of the Argentine women of the Ni Una Menos movement. This new wave of feminism in Italy gave rise to a mass movement capable of reconnecting different feminist organizations that were active in local territories, but without a unified national framework expressing common goals and slogans. Although there are great differences between the territories, based on the different social and political composition of the territory and on the presence or absence of antagonistic movements or institutional associations, today about 35 citizens’ assemblies meet throughout the country in the name of Non Una di Meno.
This movement is part of what many call the “new wave of feminism. How do you evaluate this historical conjuncture?
We can say that Non Una di meno was born in a particular historical conjuncture, that of great mobilizations of women at the global level, which catalyzed different transformative forces that were expressed in society in those years. On the one hand, there was the dimension of a new cycle of very radical struggles around the world, such as the movement for free, safe and accessible abortion in Argentina, such as the women’s strike in the Spanish state, in which almost 3 million women went on strike between 2016 and 2018, such as the struggle of women fighters against Daesh in Rojava, which opened up new perspectives on the issue of women’s autonomy.
The years between 2016 and 2018 were years in which women’s struggles took a central role at the global level in terms of transforming power relations with patriarchy and capital, to the extent that they managed to undermine productive and reproductive relations by demonstrating a marked radicalism in the perspective of transforming the whole of society in a way that does not reabsorb them into the patriarchal system. At this historical juncture, however, another dimension of women’s demands was also expressed, especially in the countries of northern Europe. It was a general diffusion of demands for gender equality, which also crossed many institutional movements and were often incorporated into neoliberal governance policies. In general, we can say that the tendency of this type of movement has been to negotiate the conditions of exploitation and gender oppression in order to have a more dignified standard of living against the daily attacks of patriarchy, such as harassment in the street or mobbing in the workplace, and institutional violence, such as that of the courts, conceived as patriarchal violence.
The fact that in Central and Northern Europe there was also a struggle at the parliamentary and governmental level for a policy of equality between men and women had an effect on the spread and massification of this type of demands, which today have become the heritage of the mainstream and liberal feminism that is very present in European and also in Italian society. So these two tendencies, one more revolutionary and the other more liberal, created a historical conjuncture that made the feminist movement explode even in Italy, where in those years we witnessed drastic cuts in the welfare for women’s health, for example through the defunding by the state of anti-violence centers and counseling centers. Moreover, in Italy those years represented a key moment in the transition from extremely liberal and globalist center-left governments to a new phase of nationalist and xenophobic far-right governments, which also radicalized the attacks on women’s freedom by re-proposing a traditionalist and conservative model of woman as the white mother of the nation, the angel of the home, but also as a career woman, totally subordinated to policies of forced work, careerism and economic exploitation.
Therefore, the global dimension of the feminist movement was a crucial aspect in the formation of the Non Una di Meno movement. How was the internationalist dimension of this movement articulated?
Non Una di Meno was born explicitly in response to the call of the Argentine movement and, more generally, of the women’s movements in Latin America, with which we have always had a very close relationship. In fact, the adoption of the same name as the movement Ni Una Menos in Europe is an Italian phenomenon, but there has also been an attempt to open the internationalist dimension to other communities of Italians not living in the country, such as in the Italian cantons of the Swiss region or in the Italian migrant community in France, Marseille or Paris, who have organized themselves locally under the name Not One Less. The movement has also participated in some international meetings, but the articulation of a structured internationalist perspective is very difficult for a mass movement like Non Una di Meno, which makes direct and local democracy and horizontality its cardinal principles, and which has some limitations in terms of organizational and decision-making capacity at the national level.
Nevertheless, the year of the pandemic was the one in which transnational relations were most realized through a transfronteriza platform, with a great protagonism of non-European countries, many comrades from Africa, Kurdish comrades and certainly many comrades from South America, who published the “Transnational Feminist Manifesto”: To Come Out of the Pandemic Together and Change the System”, because feminist movements around the world were the ones that had already announced the catastrophe that would occur during the pandemic in terms of the crisis of the health system, the centrality of reproductive work as compensation for the lack of welfare and the centrality of the social role of women who worked as nurses, doctors and cleaners in hospitals, but also at home, making it possible to avoid the complete collapse of social reproduction. For this reason, on May 1, 2021, a day of global mobilization was launched on the theme of the pandemic and the issue of the crisis of social reproduction, with the need to create a transnational women’s movement against patriarchy as the main origin of the ecological and capitalist systemic crisis. Another global mobilization launched by this platform was that of July 1, 2021 in support of women’s struggles against Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention.
Another example of how the transnational dimension has been present in the feminist movement in recent years is the diffusion of the performance “Il violador in tu camino”, which was an emblematic example of women’s transnational practice of struggle and which, in its repetition at the global level, made it clear that patriarchal violence is the hegemonic regime at the global level and that at the global level there is a resistance movement capable of shouting with one voice. Instead, in recent years, since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, it has become increasingly difficult to articulate a unified position against the arrival of war in Europe, as the movement has allowed itself to be deceived by the false opposition between a side that claims to recognize Russia as an anti-imperialist power and a side that supports Ukraine and NATO-US policies, without being able to articulate a third way for peoples’ resistance against nation-states, colonialism and patriarchy.
What resonance have the philosophy of “Jin Jiyan Azadi” and the women’s struggles in Rojhilat had in the Italian movement since the femicide of Jina Amini in 2022?
Non Una di Meno has always had many relations with the Kurdish women’s movement through contacts with solidarity organizations such as the Kurdistan Network and women’s diplomacy. Therefore, the slogan “Jin Jiyan Azadi” has always resonated in the marches of NUDM, also thanks to the fact that over the years many initiatives have been organized to spread the ideology of women’s liberation, to organize solidarity campaigns especially during the attacks on Turkey, such as for Afrin in 2018. The role of Italian internationalists, especially those who participated in the YPJ women’s defense units, was also fundamental in building bridges and alliances between Italian and Kurdish women. The mobilizations in Rojhilat have given a new power to the philosophy of “Jin Jiyan Azadi”, which has certainly contributed to the understanding of the Italian women’s movement on the concept of self-defense as a necessary condition for the construction of women’s autonomy in society, to defend the change we are trying to build in society, to give an organized response to the patriarchal attacks we suffer every day and to leave no one alone. As the slogan goes, “when they touch one, all will respond”.
What are the lines of intervention of the Non Una di Meno movement?
In the first national assemblies where the network was founded, it was decided that the main line of intervention would be the fight against male violence against women and gender violence, trying to develop a perspective of struggle in structural and non-emergency terms that would conceive the violence of patriarchy as the original matrix of systemic oppression. There has always been an attempt to propose an intersectional analysis that would keep the question of gender together with the question of race and class, which would make it possible to act from a mobilizing and organizing point of view on different issues. From the beginning, therefore, the movement was structured both nationally and locally, dividing itself into working groups that dealt with escape routes from male violence against women, legal issues, work, welfare and self-determination income, the right to sexual and reproductive health, education and training, migration, the narration of violence by the media, sexism in the movements and in feminism, ecology and territory. Among all these issues, over the years the question of health and the right to abortion has had an eminent relevance, which is not guaranteed in Italy due to arbitration laws with Catholic anti-abortion organizations closely linked to the government.
How do all these questions fit into a common horizon in practice?
Since the birth of the movement, the strike has been identified as the main practice of struggle. We began at the insistence of Argentine women to call for a strike against gender violence and violence against women, although it was not easy to develop a perspective of struggle that was not purely contentious. We started with the slogan “if our lives are not worthy, we will strike,” because if we are not worthy, if our lives are constantly attacked by patriarchal and capitalist violence, we do not produce because we do not want to reproduce this system that kills us. This is a discourse that can be extended to everyone, because the living and working conditions are so catastrophic that the fact of withdrawing from the system, because nothing is recognized and because there is no way to live a dignified life, can be a stimulus to activate for a radical transformation of what we live.
Therefore, the feminist strike is not an event, but a process that consists of abstaining from work inside and outside the home, from productive and reproductive work. It is a process that lives 365 days a year, because it is a process of subtraction from imposed social roles and radical transformation of the destinies that society assigns on the basis of gender. The feminist movement then tries to channel this organizing process toward the date of March 8, when large demonstrations are organized in every city, but in recent years it has hardly been possible to practice a massive strike in the productive or service sectors because the large confederal unions have never wanted to provide union cover for the women’s strike. This has never stopped women from taking to the streets on March 8 and carrying out forms of “social strike”, from consumption, from reproductive work, but the question of how to develop infrastructures that support and organize the mass movement is an open question in Italy. What is lacking are autonomous structures capable of organizing women in all areas of life and in all sectors.
Since the birth of the movement, the strike has been identified as the main practice of struggle. We began, at the insistence of Argentine women, to call for a strike against gender violence and violence against women, although it was not easy to develop a perspective of struggle that was not purely contentious. We started with the slogan “if our lives are not worthy, we will strike,” because if we are not worthy, if our lives are constantly attacked by patriarchal and capitalist violence, we do not produce because we do not want to reproduce this system that kills us. This is a discourse that can be extended to everyone, because the living and working conditions are so catastrophic that the fact of withdrawing from the system, because nothing is recognized and because there is no way to live a dignified life, can be a stimulus to activate for a radical transformation of what we live. Therefore, the feminist strike is not an event, but a process that consists of abstaining from work inside and outside the home, from productive and reproductive work. It is a process that lives 365 days a year, because it is a process of subtraction from imposed social roles and radical transformation of the destinies that society assigns on the basis of gender. The feminist movement then tries to channel this organizing process toward the date of March 8, when large demonstrations are organized in every city, but in recent years it has hardly been possible to practice a massive strike in the productive or service sectors because the large confederal unions have never wanted to provide union cover for the women’s strike. This has never stopped women from taking to the streets on March 8 and carrying out forms of “social strike”, from consumption, from reproductive work, but the question of how to develop infrastructures that support and organize the mass movement is an open question in Italy. What is lacking are autonomous structures capable of organizing women in all spheres of life and in all sectors of society.
What are the stories of the women’s movement that have most influenced the politics and the vision of Non Una di Meno?
Italy has a very specific political history, starting from the period of partisan resistance to Nazi fascism, especially in terms of the politics of extra-parliamentary movements and outside the institutional paths. This history is a red thread that continues to this day, connecting us to the resistance through other experiences such as the student struggles of ’68, the workers’ and women’s movements. In particular, we wouldn’t exist without the feminist movement of the 1970s. Unfortunately, in the years that followed, part of what is commonly called “second-wave feminism” became institutionalized, and this part of the movement is now part of transphobic groups, and this is due to many factors, including the transformations that took place in Italian society during the neoliberal restructuring of the 1980s, which reduced reflections on women’s political and social identity to academic discourses focused on identity politics, which are extremely exclusionary and limited from the point of view of political action in society. However, if there had not been a women’s movement in the 1970s that separated itself from mixed environments and claimed an autonomous space, today we would not have many tools that allow us to unhinge the sexist dynamics of society and anti-systemic movements. In the 1970s, women imposed on mixed extra-parliamentary movements, such as the Continuous Struggle, the need to recognize that women’s demands are political issues, because the personal, the dimension of women’s lives, is political, it is an area of struggle where all the contradictions of society emerge, and it is from there that we have to start.
How was it possible that Non Una di Meno had such a strong impact on society and managed to spread such a strong and widespread anti-patriarchal culture?
I believe that the feminist practice of starting from oneself and making one’s starting point political is a practice that can bring people closer to activism and the world of politics. Starting from one’s own needs and desires, from one’s own emotional state, from one’s work, from one’s family, from one’s couple: the fact of making political these aspects that were relegated to the private and personal sphere, the fact of sharing life with other people, was brilliant! When you begin to realize that it is not true that your personal problems as a woman are your own business and that you have to deal with them alone, but that they have a collective relevance and that you can face them together, without starting from the highest systems, but from yourself and from what society says does not matter, then a process of transformation begins that truly transforms and liberates life.
Unfortunately, violence is a dimension that every woman experiences in her life and that she goes through as an individual experience that is lived in guilt, in responsibility. We can say that NUDM has been particularly successful in the lives of people who have been radically transformed by their encounter with feminism. This can happen because you come out of loneliness, because solidarity and sisterhood are created, a new way of being in the world is created in the contexts that we usually live. Through feminism I understood a thousand things, but above all that you can’t change the world without working on yourself: it was disruptive, it was a great effort and an immense joy. So feminism is first and foremost about transforming your life and your feelings so that you don’t feel alone anymore, so that you don’t feel crazy or wrong anymore. The transformation of life is the best form of self-defense against patriarchal violence, and Non Una di Meno was a movement of transformation through collective and organized existential self-defense.
