How fascism ruled women: Italy, 1922-1945
ISBN: 9780520074569
Platform/Publisher: ACLS / University of California Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Ten pages at a time; Download: Ten pages at a time
Subjects: European: 1800-present;

This noteworthy study reveals how the regime of Il Ducein web , Benito Mussolini, systematically sought to prevent Italian women from experiencing emancipation even as he heralded the advent of the ``new Italian woman'' ( nuova italiana ). 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 author, who teaches history at Rutgers, has much to say about the quasi-religious cult of Ducismo, about Fascism's ``virilist'' politics and about the exaggerated machismo of a regime that taxed celibate men to pay for child welfare programs. The product of meticulous research and deep contemplation, the book is an important contribution to women's studies. Illustrations. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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).

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