The following text was presented by the women of the Intercategorial of Turin, Italy at the International Feminist/ Socialist Meeting in Paris, May 1977.

Our experience of meeting together as working women within the labour union began with our participation in the "150 hours" courses dealing with the condition of women. They expressed the need to continue, even outside the framework of the courses. This proposal was widely supported by the women already within the labour union and it also marked the beginning of the Intercategorial as a coming together of women: workers and housewives and unemployed women as well.

From the start, the Intercategorial was marked by its contrast with the traditional position of women's commissions in the labour unions. Our purpose was not to create another study commission on the "origins of the oppression of women" but to claim the right to organize ourselves autonomously in the labour unions, to analyse how we are discriminated against in the factories and in society, to discuss our problems among ourselves before confronting the labour union as a whole.

The women of the "150 hours" began meeting in the factories with other women, almost always outside of working hours, to face together their common problems.

Thanks to these first meetings and discussions, we were able to organize in the factories assemblies directed to all the women. For the preparation of the 8th of March celebration in 1976, we held our first assemblies composed exclusively of women, to allow all women to talk without fear of being judged or laughed at by men in confronting the issues which until now have been considered "nonpolitical" or "personal matters".

Meanwhile, our organization was growing. We held our meetings not only in the central headquarters of the labour union, but in the local branches and reinforced our links with the housewives and working women in the neighbourhoods. Thanks to this organization we were able to organize a provincial meeting of women metal workers during which we discussed our objectives and problems of organizing within the factories.

A first challenge to our abilities to take initiatives was our participation in defining the contents of platform of demands during the labour union negotiations in the metallurgy, textile and electrical energy industries. We raised such issues as employment for women, paid leave for the mother and father during the illness of children, job qualifications etc.

Since the beginning, these new experiences have been closely linked with the feminist movement, its method and practice. In fact, the most important thing we learned from the women's movement is the method of approaching  problems, of beginning with the personal experience to arrive at general aspects which can lead to a definition of a common condition. Through this method drawn from the feminist movement we analyzed our condition as working women, our relationships with work and family.

While we were trying to understand phenomena such as women voluntarily leaving their jobs, acceptance of part-time work and illegal work in the homes, (all things which are rapidly increasing in the economic crisis), we came to realize the poverty of the labour union's strategy which is decided above our heads and corresponds to the dominating trend of accepting sacrifices without compensatory measures and which may lead to serious setbacks for the whole movement. We also realized the difficulty in defining an alternative strategy which we could consider as ours and which could turn our needs into objectives.

Through the Intercategorial feminism entered the doors of the factories. We slowly began to close the traditional breach between feminism - branded as bourgeois and linked to sexism - and emancipation. During these two years, in hundreds of assemblies we have held in many factories, we talked about ourselves, our specific problems, about abortion, the job categories to which we are confined, about social services which are becoming scarcer, about consultori, about health. Hundreds of women who at first a priori rejected feminism grew with us and, oftentimes, went to the streets with us.

There are still many open questions to solve, of course. First- of all is the problem of defining more precisely this structure which today finds itself organizing many different sectors of women - politicized and non-politicized, unionized and non-unionized, unemployed and housewives - who have different needs at various levels.

Second, there is the problem of our relationship with the labour union. At first the labour union just observed and tolerated rather than repressed, for it was to to its advantage that a group of women stimulate the more active participation of women in the activities of the labour union. Today there is the attempt to co-opt our organization into the traditional logic of the old study groups and women's commissions.

Through the Intercategorial, we have succeeded in finding not only a new way of organizing ourselves in our places of work and in the labour union, but also of pressuring the labour union and all its structures to take up the issues put forward by the women's movement so that the labour union is beginning to question its own internal functioning and its response to issues such as autonomy, internal democracy and the real participation of the rank and file in its decisions.