How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945

Victoria de Grazia

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"Italy has been made; now we need to make the Italians, " is a long-familiar Italian saying. Mussolini was the first head of government to include women in this mandate. What the fascist dictatorship expected of its female subjects and how they experienced the Duce's brutal but seductive rule are the main topics of Victoria de Grazia's new book. The author draws on an unusual array of sources--memoirs, novels, and reports on the images and events of mass culture, as well as government statistics and archival accounts--to present a broad yet detailed characterization of Italian women's ambiguous and ambivalent experience of a regime that promised women modernity, yet denied them freedom. Always attentive to the great diversity among women and careful to distinguish fascist rhetoric from the practices actually shaping daily existence, de Grazia moves with ease from the public discourse about maternity and family life to the images of femininity in commercial culture. The first study of women's experience under Italian fascism, this book offers a compelling treatment of the making of contemporary Italian society. With acute comparisons between the sexual politics of Italian fascism and developments elsewhere, including Hitler's Germany, de Grazia illuminates trends and dilemmas common to the construction of female citizenship in twentieth-century societies.

Book Details

Publisher: University of California Press
Publish Date: Oct 11st, 1993
Pages: 384
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 8.98in - 6.00in - 0.99in - 1.33lb
EAN: 9780520074576
Categories: • Europe - General• Gender Studies

About the Author

Victoria de Grazia is Professor of History, Columbia University, and the author of The Culture of Consent: Mass Organization of Leisure in Fascist Italy (1981).

Praise for this book

"This noteworthy study reveals how the regime of Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, systematically sought to prevent Italian women from experiencing emancipation even as he heralded the advent of the "new Italian woman." . . . Analyzing the deep conflict between modernity and traditional patriarchal authority, de Grazia defines the emerging ideals of Italian womanhood in the 1920s and '30s when Catholic, Fascist and commercial models of conduct competed to shape women's perceptions of themselves and of their society. . . . The product of meticulous research and deep contemplation, the book is an important contribution to women's studies."-- "Publishers Weekly"

"Extremely well researched and drawing upon a vast array of sources, this is the first full-length study of the experiences of women under Italian fascism." -- "Library Journal"