Teresa Noce was born in
Turin, Italy on 29 July 1900 to an unmarried, working-class mother. She started working as a turner in the local
Fiat Brevetti factory at the age of ten. By the age of 12, she was involved in the workers' union and joined demonstrations. As a journalist she wrote for
Il Grido del Popolo (''The People's Cry
) and Ordine Nuove'' from 1914 to 1917. She protested when Italy entered World War I in 1915 and joined the Young Socialist movement in 1919. Following the rise of Mussolini and the Fascists, Noce left the Socialists, becoming a founding member of the
Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1921. After the Communist and Socialist parties were outlawed in 1925, she continued organizing workers illegally. During the 1920s, she oversaw the Communist Youth Federation and their periodical
La voce della gioventù. She met PCI functionary
Luigi Longo, whom she married in 1926. The two emigrated first to Moscow then to Paris. Noce organized a strike of rice workers in the spring of 1934. She then fled to Paris and surfaced as a leading political figure among the Italian exile community. As editor of
Il Grido del Popolo, Noce called for improved labor conditions for the working class and for abolition the Special Tribunals used to imprison anti-Fascists. She also led a campaign on behalf of imprisoned PCI leader
Antonio Gramsci that resulted in mass demonstrations in Paris. In 1947, Noce was elected as the general secretary of the
Italian Federation of Textile Workers, becoming the first woman to lead a major Italian industrial trade union. She served until 1955, when she became the general secretary of the Trade Union International of Textile and Clothing Workers, and then as president of its successor, the
Trade Union International of Textile, Leather and Fur Workers Unions. In Italy Noce was elected to the Central Committee of the PCI. She was then elected to the Italian Parliament and was appointed general secretary of the textile workers union, where she founded the publication
La voce dei tessili. In 1951 she was one of two dissenting votes in the Communist leadership against a proposal made by dictator
Joseph Stalin. ==Electoral history==