1.

Record Nr.

UNISA996247944503316

Autore

De Grazia Victoria

Titolo

How fascism ruled women : Italy, 1922-1945 / / Victoria de Grazia [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, c1992

ISBN

0-520-91138-5

0-585-07196-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xiii, 350 p. ) : ill. ;

Disciplina

305.42/0945

Soggetti

Women - Italy - History - 20th century

Women - Government policy - Italy - History - 20th century

Fascism - Italy - History - 20th century

History

Italy Politics and government 1922-1945

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

"A Centennial book"--P. [iii].

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 289-338) and index.

Nota di contenuto

1: The Nationalization of Women -- 2: The Legacy of Liberalism -- 3: Motherhood -- 4: The Family Versus the State -- 5: Growing Up -- 6: Working -- 7: Going Out -- 8: Women's Politics in a New Key -- 9: There Will Come a Day.

Sommario/riassunto

"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.