Elvira Badaracco (known as Ninni) was born in Alessandria on May 22, 1911, the only daughter of Giovanni Battista Badaracco and Maria Angela Bobbio.
After studying privately in boarding schools in Lausanne and London, she completed her studies in Milan at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, graduating in modern philology with a thesis on Italo Svevo.
It was 1939 and, at the outbreak of World War II, Elvira decided to renounce the protection of her home to serve as a Red Cross nurse in military hospitals and tuberculosis sanatoriums.
In 1949, she married Aldo Speirani, to whom she remained bound for the following 14 years.
In 1955, her father Giovanni, to whom Elvira was particularly close, passed away.
In 1963, she separated by mutual consent from her husband and began to devote herself passionately to political activity: from 1964, she joined and was active in the ranks of the Italian Socialist Party, where she focused primarily on social issues and what was then defined as the “women’s question.” Her membership in the UDI, Italian Women’s Union, also dates back to the 1960s. Her political activity in the PSI was rich in commitments and responsibilities: secretary of the Morandi Section from 1964 to 1970, Elvira organized one of the first spontaneous district councils. She was subsequently elected councilor for district 5 of Milan and, as a party representative, served on the Board of Directors of the Ronzoni Surgical Institute and later, for several years, of the Clinical Institutes of Advanced Studies.
For years, she held the position of Provincial and then Regional Women’s Officer of the PSI, and within this role, she organized various conferences: on the history of socialist women, on labor, on women workers’ health, and on the issue of abortion. The most important were those that gave rise to the volumes: “Women, Health, Work” in 1973, a collection of proceedings from the conference “Prevention and Protection of Women Workers’ Health”; “Conscious Motherhood” in 1976, a collection of proceedings from the conference “Conscious Motherhood, Contraception, Abortion” (the volumes were edited by Elvira Badaracco, Francesco Dambrosio, and Mauro Buscaglia for the publisher Mazzotta). From 1974, she began her professional activity as a journalist, primarily for “L’Avanti!”, but also for other national publications. The last institutional position she held as a representative of the PSI was that of city councilor, from 1979 to 1980.
At the end of the 1970s, when the internal line of the PSI defined itself on different positions in contrast with everything she had believed in and worked for, Elvira decided once again to take a risk and to change.
In 1979, together with her friend Pierrette Coppa—thirty years her junior—Elvira founded the “Center for Historical Studies on the Women’s Liberation Movement in Italy,” of which she would be the passionate President until her death. The CSSMLDI was established with the purpose of collecting, organizing, preserving, and making accessible the heritage of knowledge and practices developed by the women’s political movement, in the conviction that the protection and promotion of the history of feminism and women’s history in general constitutes a value that is not only scientific and cultural, but also—and above all—political. Around this initial research nucleus, numerous projects have developed over the years, always supported by Elvira’s great ability to engage and connect the most diverse personalities.
Elvira died in Milan on January 21, 1994, and, by her express testamentary will, the CSSMLDI modified its legal form, becoming a Foundation with similar purposes named in her honor.