Fascist Policies on

women

October 1922-July 1943

Alice Nigri
Battle of Births 1927
Attempt to increase Italian Population  Encouraged early
marriage
 Offered generous
maternity benefits
AIM: population  Exhorted women not
To create large Expanding increase from 40
future army Italy’s empire million -> 60 to work
million by 1950
 Gave jobs to married
fathers in preference
over single men
Battle of Births 1927
Effect of policy

Status deliberately and consitently

downgraded

Stressed traditional role of women as

housewives and mothers

Downturn in employment Todd and Walker page 62

opportunities for women
Family Law 1929
Codice Rocco
- Abolished legal equality of spouses in
marriage
- Gave husband exclusive control over
relationship
- Family finances and property
- Restricted divorce: making it more difficult
for women to leave unhappy marriages
- Significant reversal of changes made in 20th
century: 1925 right to vote
Family Law 1929
Husband’s consent needed for decisions regarding
financial actions, property ownership

Difficulty asserting independence and pursuing careers

Effect
Vulnerable to financial exploitation

Significant setback for women’s legal rights and social

status
 Encouraged creation Aimed to promote
of women’s fascist ideology and
organisations mobilise women’s
• Fasci Femminili
support in regume

Women’s Emphasised
traditional gender
Discourgaed women
from pursuing
roles education and career
Organisations
OVERALL EFFECT
NEGATIVE EFFECTS POSITIVE EFFECTS
- Emphasis on traditional gender role - Did not explicitly limit women’s vote
- Limiting women socially and economically (1925 right to vote)
- Codependency: dominant male positions in the
home
- Involved women in politics (to some extent)
- Violence and physical harassment to women who
were politically independent, open-minded,
intelligent
- Perceived as threats
- “immoral”
- “anti-fascists”
Sources
• Background image title page: https://lifeinitaly.com/life-in-italy-under-the-rule-of-mussolini/
• Background image slides:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a-house-in-the-mountains-the-women-who-liberated-italy-from-fas
cism-by-caroline-moorehead-review-the-forgotten-thousands-who-fought-fascists-v9gwss2hp
•De Grazia, Victoria. "How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945." History Workshop Journal, vol. 12,
no. 1, 1981, pp. 5-31. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4288197.
•Duggan, Christopher. "Fascist Women and the Afterlife of Fascism." Journal of Modern Italian Studies,
vol. 14, no. 3, 2009, pp. 299-305. Taylor & Francis Online, doi: 10.1080/13545710903062477.
•Ghisleri, Rosella. "Women's Work and Wages in Fascist Italy." The Journal of Economic History, vol. 54,
no. 4, 1994, pp. 846-866. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2124165.
•Koonz, Claudia. Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics. St. Martin's Press,
1987.
•Codice rocco: https://massimedalpassato.it/19-ottobre-1930-promulgato-il-codice-penale/