Transgressive transnationalism: the anti-colonial strategies in the Women’s International Democratic Federation

This chapter highlights a form of transgressive transnationalism practiced by a women’s organization previously dismissed as a Communist front, illuminated here with local sources from its Italian affiliate. It addresses the relationship between Western women’s associations and other feminisms around the world. It advances the ongoing debate around the ways “politically neutral” organizations, on the one hand, and the “left-feminist” movements, on the other hand, responded to an anti-imperialist transnational agenda and a growing anti-colonialist tendency during the first period of the Cold War, from 1945 until 1960. It considers the mutual sisterhood and connections between communist women in countries associated with imperialism and those in colonized territories. Militants affiliated to the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF), mostly located in the West, supported anti-colonial uprisings through solidarity messages, international propaganda, non-imperialistic appeals, and lobbying both their governments and the United Nations. They provided women’s movements struggling for national independence with transnational assistance and political support. The socialist and communist women of the WIDF looked beyond national identity to embrace the anti-colonial cause, strengthening a transnational defense of self-determination.