9īoth the UN and ILO in post-WWII years addressed equal pay as a key issue, adopting a Resolution and a Convention, in 19, respectively. 8 As the Soviet Union was not part of the ILO in the 1940s – being re-admitted only in 1954 – it tried, together with Poland and the World Federation of Trade Union, to shift the discussion from the ILO to the Commission on the Status of Women within the United Nations Economic and Social Council. In spite of the long tradition in the Socialist and then Communist movement to promote equal pay, Socialist states in the Cold War era did not address the issue of unequal pay in their own countries, mentioned exclusively in regard to capitalist countries. 7 While the former considered equal pay as an individual right, the latter saw equal social and economic rights, including equal pay, as a pre-condition for political rights. Gender equality was entangled in Cold War dynamics, thus Western countries and Socialist countries promoted different visions of equal pay. 5 Rig concept pushing for the adoption of an ‘overriding social objective’ in the drafting of post-WWII economic policies. In the Cold War Era, the important nexus between the struggle for equal pay and women’s demands for social rights clearly emerged at global level, claimed by women’s organizations, trade unions and international organizations which ht before the end of WWII, the 1944 Philadelphia Declaration had emphasized social security as a key lobbied to implement equal remuneration principles in a wider social justice framework. The 1919 Constitution of the newly established International Labour Organization included the principle of “equal remuneration for work of equal value” among its core articles 3, thanks to the active role of the so-called women internationalists within but especially outside the ILO 4. A key role between the late 19 th and early twentieth century was played by socialist and non-socialist networks as well as by women’s organizations active at international level 2.
The end of WWI marked a crucial step at international level in the long-lasting discussion on working women’s equality and equal pay between male and female workers.
Particular attention is also devoted to the biographies of Italian women involved in the thirty-year struggle for equal pay and equality rights, which also played a role at the European and international level. In addition to the international scholarship, the article draws on parliamentary speeches, conference proceedings and archival material produced by women’s associations, trade unions, employers’ associations, the Italian government, the European Economic Community and the International Labour Organization. The specificity of the Italian context is investigated within a comparative perspective, which unveils how equal pay struggles connect different geopolitical spaces. The debate and struggle for equal pay in Cold War Italy is investigated as a case study useful to understanding how the very concepts of equality and social justice were put into practice with regard to women workers. The study builds on the international scholarship on equal pay as a global struggle, which peaked in the so-called Golden Age of the twentieth century but continued to be highly relevant in the decades following the UN International Women’s Year and nowadays as well.
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