Sovversive nella Grande guerra. Tre profili a confronto

Subversive women in the Great War. Three profiles in comparison. Historiography, on the impulse of women's studies, has long wondered about the relationship between women-war-subjectivity, laying the foundations for investigations that over time have probed in depth the dynamics of war contexts thought of as female, with particular attention in recent years to the theme of conflict and popular protest against the conflict. Starting from these reflections, the essay focuses the attention on female activism in the First World War captured from the point of view of involvement on the anti-militarist and revolutionary front, starting from three exemplifying biographical profiles of other paths of dissent not yet emerged from the testimonies. They were Rita Maierotti, Grazia Baldassarre and Ortensia De Meo, three “subversives” with roles of responsibility in the socialist party, who took up the challenge of mobilizing the potential forces in movement of Southern Italy to coordinate and channel them into anti-war resistance, with the longer-term perspective of contributing to the construction of an inclusive and democratic society.