Mussolini’s policies on Womanhood and Youth

1. Mussolini’s policies on Womanhood and Youth

2. Repression • fascist movements endorsed social interventionism dedicated to influencing society to promote the state's interests • Fascism promoted principles of masculine heroism, militarism and discipline, and rejected cultural pluralism and multiculturalism

3. Womenhood •  "war is to man what maternity is to the woman“ • Italian Fascism called for women to be honoured as "reproducers of the nation", and the Italian Fascist government held ritual ceremonies to honour women's role within the Italian nation • In 1934, Mussolini declared that employment of women was a "major aspect of the thorny problem of unemployment" and that for women, working was "incompatible with childbearing". Mussolini went on to say that the solution to unemployment for men was the "exodus of women from the work force"

4. the Italian Fascist Party took control in 1922 •  women industrial laborers were no longer accepted, and the party began a restoration of the traditional female role. • The ideal of women as mothers and managers of the home became prevalent as the dominating values of fascists created emphasizing and a hierarchy of gender. • The male-dominated Fascist Party had traditional misogynist views. As a result of fascist thinking about the role of women in the family, women faced poor treatment in almost all areas of daily life outside the home including politics, economics, and society

5. Policies in the workplace •  in 1934, a law was passed that expanded benefits and coverage for women employed in industry. As a result, these women were given a two-month paid “compulsory leave.” • They were also guaranteed time off to breast-feed newborns until they were a year old and the government provided feeding rooms for nursing women working in factories that employed more than fifty working women • Furthermore, women were allotted a lump-sum payment when they gave birth, which immediately gave them a two-month wage when they had a baby.

6. Increasing Birth Rate • The Fascist government in Italy banned literature on birth control and increased penalties for abortion in 1926, declaring both crimes against the state.

7. In the 1920s, the Italian Fascist government's Opera NazionaleDopolavoro (OND) allowed working women to attend various entertainment and recreation events, including sports that in the past had traditionally been played by men. • The Roman Catholic Church criticized this move, claimed that these activities were causing "masculinization" of women.The Fascists responded to such criticism by restricting women to participating in "feminine" sports

8. Italian Fascism favoured expanding voting rights to women. -> In November 1925, women were given restricted voting rights, juxtaposed with the eliminaton of opposition parties, which enabled the Fascist government to rule with dictatorial powers • Birth rate actually declined until 1936, and rose only very slowly after this. By 1950, the population was only 47.5 million, long short of the target. Even in the workplace, the industrial workforce was still 33% in 1936, a fall of only 3% from 1921. • These policies were of no success to Mussolini as the practical demands of the economy meant that his ideological aims went unrealized.

9. Education and youth • Italy's education system evoked the militaristic terminology and trappings of the old Roman Empire. Schools taught children to be creatures of the state. • Carefully-designed, state-sponsored, quasi-military youth organizations were established. Boys were to be soldiers, and girls were to raise soldiers.

10. He imposed a standardized curriculum designed to inculcate his propaganda. • "The Government," he declared, "demands that the school be inspired by the ideals of fascism...it demands that the school at all levels and in all its instruction train Italian youth to understand fascism, to ennoble itself through fascism, and to live in the historic climate created by the Fascist revolution."

12. This pedagogical "charter" drawn up by Mussolini's minister of education, Giuseppe Bottai, is a radical reforming document that proposes to substitute for the existing bourgeois system one more responsive to the needs of students • The system would include nursery schools, trade and artisan schools, special training for girls, and the introduction of practical crafts, among other considerations.

13. In schools, loyalty of teachers was enforced in 1929, oath of loyalty, 1937, compulsory membership in fascist teachers association.  • Books lacking in patriotism were banned – 1936

14. The establishment of youth clubs was an attempt to reach people outside of school via ONB (Opera NazionaleBalilla), 1926. • This aimed to transform the Italian nation ‘body and soul’, and focused on both military/ideological training and sport and fitness. • Children from the age of 8 •  By 1937, seven million had joined the ONB. 

16. Pamphlet prepared by the women Fascists of Padua to help train young girls who would eventually become servants in private homes. It starts with the training and early household experiences of a recent graduate from the local school of home economics, and concludes with recipes and weights and measures used in cooking. • Programma di EducazioneFisica.Quaderno I Femminile. Opera Balilla, ca. 1938. • Program of physical education for girls ages eight to eleven, including exercises imitating such physical tasks as the farmer hoeing and the sailor rowing. • P.N.F. FederazionedeiFasciFemminiliPadova. GuidadellaSegretaria di Fascio. Padua: Stediv, 1942. • This book describes in considerable detail the administrative organization of the women's wing of the Fascist party, to guide the provincial secretaries directing each section.

17. notes • Education- Mussolini aimed to create loyal future fascists to secure regime, and aggressive, disciplined future soldiers. The youth was to be identified with fascism, Mussolini and Italy – complete subordination to the national state.  • Youth - The system would include nursery schools, trade and artisan schools, special training for girls, and the introduction of practical crafts, among other considerations. •  Cult of personality promoted in school –