How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922–1945

“Italy has been made; now we need to make the Italians,” goes a familiar Italian saying. Mussolini was the first head of state to include women in this mandate. How the fascist dictatorship defined women’s place in modern Italy and how women experienced the Duce’s rule are the subjects of Victoria de Grazia’s seminal and influential study. De Grazia draws on an array of sources―memoirs and novels; the images, songs, and events of mass culture; and government statistics and archival reports—to craft a broad yet detailed characterization of Italian women’s ambiguous and ambivalent experience of a regime that promised modernity yet denied women emancipation. Now, thirty-five years after its initial publication, de Grazia has thoroughly revised and expanded her work, adding two new chapters specifically focusing on the Fascist regime’s imperial rule in East Africa.