Italy was a relatively new state; it had only been recently united in 1861 and divisions among separate regions and social classes remained a predominant issue in the early 1920s. Following the Great War, the Italians were resentful of their “mutilated victory” and criticized the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 for being unjust to the Italians. The frustration of the people was contemplated further by the recession that followed the war, and an incapable government that failed to restrain the economic depression from expanding.
In 1919, less than a year following the termination of the war, Benito Mussolini, a veteran of World War One and publisher of a Socialist newspaper, formed the new political party Fasci di Combattimento in Milan. This new political party embraced nationalism and stressed order and obedience to the state, evolving in into the political theory of fascism. In its early years, the party maintained an anti-communist vision and manifested its intention in restoring the long-lost Roman Empire. As well as, it criticized the Italian government for its inability to oppose the inequitable treaty of 1919, appealing to the public’s discontent. Mussolini organized a paramilitary, known as the “Black Shirts” which terrorized any opponents to the party, eventually enabling him to rise to power.
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Fascist ideologies attracted the populace of Italy, who was desperately anxious for change. In October of 1922, Mussolini led his famous March of Rome, which successfully granted him the place as the Prime Minister of Italy. Soon after, Mussolini consolidated his power in the government, mostly through the medium of violence carried out by the Black Shirts. At last, in January of 1925, the Fascist state was officially proclaimed, with Mussolini as its dictator, who became referred to as “Il Duce.”
Mussolini appealed to the Western powers seeking new treaties, however, his aggressive invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 ended any hope for any possible alliances with the United Kingdom or France. Thus, in 1936 he began supporting Francisco Franco’s Nationalist army in the Spanish Civil War, which simultaneously was being supported by Hitler’s Nazi Germany. This paved the way for an alliance between Italy and Germany, and in 1939 the Pact of Steel was signed, which officially obliged Italy to join World War Two. Consequently, Mussolini was forced out of office in 1943 and later killed in 1945.
Background Information on Women in Italy
Before the Great War, women’s role in Italy was restricted to the household, where they were constrained in performing domestic tasks. The high illiteracy rate, scarce community involvement, a predominantly agricultural society with sound patronizing values, and an overall stagnant economy, all contributed to a strong setback in the development of feminist movements in the country, compared to the neighboring powers. However, this drastically changed when in 1915 Italy officially entered the Great War, and as a consequence, men were summoned to mobilize. This left women with more job opportunities that needed to be occupied. For the first time, females in Italy experienced autonomy and recognized their social importance in society, inevitably, resulting in the emergence of women’s organizations, which fought for women’s equality. Nonetheless, when World War One ended, veterans returned home and demanded their former job positions. Women who had contributed to the war were expected to revert to performing their traditional role, yet seeds of growing feminism had been planted in the populace. Women’s contributions to the war were not exclusive to Italy, but rather a phenomenon that had occurred throughout Europe. In fact, many allied countries, such as Britain, Germany, and the United States authorized universal suffrage after the war, sadly, this was not the case for Italian women, who only gained the vote in 1945.
Policy Towards Women 1922-1925
Women saw the new Fascist party, as a modern party that would at last grant them equity. Initially, Mussolini placed himself as an ally of women, and the Fasci di Combatimento in 1919 included in their campaign the suffrage for women. This campaign towards women's suffrage was additionally promoted by D’Annunzio in his Carta del Canaro (the constitution of the newly gained Fiume in 1923) which gave women above 20, the same rights as men, including the vote. On May 14, 1923, Mussolini also gave an opening speech at the IX Congress of the International Alliance for Women’s Suffrage in Rome, where he declared that no party in Italy was opposing the possibility that equal rights would be granted to women. In fact, in his speech, he stated that “women will bring to the exercise of these new rights, their fundamental virtues of balance, equilibrium, and prudence.” This growing feminism also gave rise to women’s parties, predominantly the fascist women’s party, Fasci Femminili founded in 1925. Yet, this feminist campaign was no more than a tool for Mussolini to gain support for the party. After promising all women the possibility to vote, in 1925 Mussolini granted only a small part of the female populace the vote in administrative elections, but only 3 months later he abolished universal suffrage en masse. Following this, the unquestionable anti-feminist policy would arise, dragging women back into tradition.
Demographic Campaign
After 1925, Mussolini’s real policy towards women came to light. In all of Italy, due to the rising feminist isms as a result of World War One, the Spanish flu, and the growing urbanization, birthrates decreased. While in the 1800s Italy’s birth rate was 39 births per thousand habitants, in the interwar years of 1921 to 1925 these numbers had decreased to 29.9 thousand. In the eyes of Mussolini, this was a threat to Italy’s future race, to the extent that the extreme rights saw it as endangered to extinction. Accordingly, the regime sought to increase the birth rates in a new demographic campaign, known as the “Battle for Births.” Il Duce first acknowledged this new pronatalist campaign in his famous Ascension Day Speech of May 26, 1927, drafted with the demographer, Corrado Gini. In his speech, Mussolini declared that “the most fundamental, essential element in the political, and therefore economic and moral, influence of a nation lies in its demographic strength.” He claimed that 40 million Italians was nothing compared to the 90 million Germans, 200 million Slavs, and the 450 million people that the British had only in its colonies. Mussolini affirmed, that if Italy was going to become a military might and regain its deserved Roman Empire, the population had to rapidly increase to a minimum of 60 million people. Mussolini attacked Thomas Malthus's ideologies – a growing population would terminate the resources needed to survive, and the entire population would starve - and published his book “Il Numero come to Forza” (Strength in Numbers) where he outlined that if fertility rates would increase, the Empire would be rebuilt “in no time.”
Fascist pronatalist policies were necessary to fulfill Mussolini’s both domestic and foreign policies. A growth in population would supply the nation with a strong and growing army, which would, in turn, allow Italy to defend itself in the event of an attack by the Western Allies. A strong army was also obligatory to accomplish Italy’s imperialistic ambitions in Abynissia, and successively the establishment the Empire. Optimizing Italy’s population size would also supply the country with cheap labor, which was crucial to develop autarky and supplement Mussolini’s military ambitions. Nonetheless, the battle for births also contributed to Duce’s consolidation of power, by securing the support of both the Catholics and the peasants, which permitted him to establish a totalitarian state.
To instantly launch the pronatalist campaign, one of the first measures taken by Mussolini was the introduction of the tax on Celibacy which came into effect on October 1, 1927. This tax targeted unmarried men between the age of 26 to 65, and slowly incremented with age, with a maximum of 100 lines. This tax was to act as an incentive to promote marriages and condemn those who didn’t place the “nation’s needs” as a priority. As Mussolini declared in one of his speeches in 1928, “He who is not a father is not a man.” This law was revised in 1929, in which it declared that bachelors should no longer be given preference for employment in public institutions, while instead married couples who had children should be prioritized. However, this tax cannot be considered a success, as marriage rates from the 1920s to 1930s remained mainly static. In the eyes of Mussolini, the failure of the tax, only meant that the law had to become stricter, doubling its price in 1934 and again in 1936. Nonetheless, the tax never met Duce’s initial expectations.
As a result of the failure of the tax, the regime now sought to encourage women in reproducing. Attempting to compel women to have more children, the state banned the use of contraceptives, and sex education and condemned abortion. The termination of pregnancies was officially banned in the Rocco Code of Italy, in 1930, which declared abortion was to be seen as a “moral outrage” which would weaken the Italian race. However, once again these policies failed, as in fact, the birthrate dropped between the years 1927 and 1934.
Economic Policies
One of the main obstacles which the regime faced in the early 1930s was that the families were retained from reproducing, due to the high costs that would follow. To overcome this issue, the government in 1934 introduced family subsidies for industrial workers for children below the age of 14 and shortly extended to all workers in 1936. The following year, new legislation was passed which encouraged local administrations to provide housing for large families, and as well as, paid maternity leave was introduced. However, these new degrees were not sufficient to motivate the poorer-lower class. As a result, in 1937 the regime created two new institutions: The Central Demographic Office and the Fascist Union for Large Families, which were responsible for collecting demographic data and informing families of at least 7 children about the benefits the state had entitled them. In the same year, the state implemented Nazi-style marriage loans, seeking to appeal to the working class, which ranged from a minimum of 1000 lines to a maximum of 3000. Nonetheless, these new “economic benefits” that the state provided were ineffective in increasing fertility rates. First of all, poverty was still widespread throughout Italy, and the proletariat didn’t have the means necessary to raise a big family. Another reason was the government, only provided limited benefits, compared to what portrayed the propaganda. In fact, Italy’s economy was collapsing by 1937, and the state could not afford to offset the costs of big families, therefore only a few families were granted the benefits the state promised them. The dictatorship aware of this, attempted to make childbirth seem as if it was a service to the state.
These economic measures were implemented along with laws that sought to decrease women's employment and increase their presence in the domestic field. Removing women from the job industries, served two main purposes: to increase male employment to complement its drastic decrease due to the economic recession of 1930 and also to reduce any possible distraction which would limit women’s will to reproduce. Since the early 1920s, policies prevented women from teaching in schools. However, by 1933 policies became more rigid, limiting women from even competing in state civil examinations. By 1937 the situation only worsened and a law was implemented that restricted women’s employment to no more than 10% in the workplace. Nonetheless, this new legislation lasted for only 3 years, as in 1940 it was annulled due to entrance into World War Two. Overall, these policies only had limited success. While they managed to decrease women’s workforce in the areas of teaching, jurisprudence, medicine, and journalism, they failed in many other fields. 1 out of 4 women continued to work, regardless of the legislation thorough out the 1930s. In 1931, 12% of all married women had jobs, while in 1936 it had now increased to 20.7%.
Propaganda
By the early 1930s, the pronatalist policies had resulted in failure, and Mussolini decided to intensify the propaganda. On December 24, 1933, the first Mother’s Day was celebrated, to honor those mothers who had given birth to the highest number of children. While Catholics had previously celebrated this day in some cities on March 25, the Day of the Annunciation, it now had become a public celebration throughout the entire nation. The fascists decided Christmas Eve would be the appropriate choice for this day, as it correlated with the Catholic cult of the Virgin Mary. During the celebration, which Duce himself attended, the mothers were given medals and awarded monetary prizes. A minimum of 12 children was required to be acceptable for the rewards, and 3,000 liras were awarded to the mothers in 1933. That year, 92 women throughout Italy were awarded, which altogether had given birth to 1380 children. To further encourage high fertility, the awarded price increased to 5000 lines in 1935. This was generous considering the average wage for a blue-collar worker was 300 liras a month.
Similar to Mother’s Day, in 1933, the Sagra della Nuzialità was announced. In this day, couples were encouraged to get married and were granted money as a reward. Only in Rome, 800 couples got married that day, and then they would proudly walk through the streets of Rome manifesting their support to the state.
Nonetheless, the propaganda that influenced most women, was the daily to daily propaganda. Initially, the propaganda was mainly visual to appeal to all levels of society. However, the regime over time began to control more media, including cinemas, newspapers, literature, fashion, and architecture to fully transmit the Fascist ideologies. Also, Mussolini organized many public events like parades, rallies, and the famous Fascist Saturday, which praised Mussolini and evoked nationalism. Fascist propaganda manufactured two different female images, which were portrayed throughout the different media. One was known as the Donna crisis, this one was portrayed as an urban, skinny, hysterical, and most importantly, sterile woman. The Donna crisis was used by the Fascist party as a model to avoid, as it opposed Fascism’s ideals. This model was associated with the new image of the Italian Marietta, which paralleled the new generation of young women throughout all of Western Europe and the United States, for instance, the French garcon, the American flapper, and the British bachelor girl. This new generation of young women was predominantly from the middle and upper classes, and they encouraged women’s independence and freedom. This persona was highly discredited throughout the various propaganda, for instance, in 1928, a song called “Barlocchie e Profumi” was played on the radio daily, and it depicted women as spendthrifts who didn’t take care of their children. This characterization was constructed to symbolize the threats of modernization and the sense of independence planted in women in Italy.
The other figure was instead the donna madre: she was characterized as national, rural, robust, and prolific. She was the embodiment of fascist ideals, as well as responsible for raising children to be good soldiers. When depicting the donna madre in their propaganda, the dictatorship addressed women as mythic figures, for instance, “the bearers of numerous children,” “the mothers of soldiers” and the procreators of the race.” During the 1930s many fashion articles became a source of propaganda to encourage the idealization of the donna madre and illustrated only women with large hips, long hair, and skirts. The state recognized that the women’s magazines were successful in appealing to women, and as a result in 1935, the Ente Nazionale della Moda was funded by the government to produce clothes for large-hip women. Yet, the most successful pronatalist propaganda tool used by the dictatorship was the establishment of the female organizations of the Fascist National Party. Upper-middle-class women volunteered in these organizations as role models, who taught peasant women domestic skills as well as, how to properly raise their children with fascist doctrines.
Overall, the regime’s propaganda was successful in reaching all social classes, and remarkably at targeting women. While, it may have not been extreme as Nazi Germany, Fascist propaganda transmitted Fascist ideals successfully to the entire Italian populace. However, it was only able to promote the battle for births to a limited extent. There was a lack of financial support, to persuade the lower social classes to pursue the campaign, and although it successfully encouraged its ideology of it, in practice the lack of enough details, resources, and logic led to its failure.
OMNI
‘Maximum natality, minimum mortality; these two aspects of fascism’ demographic policy are interdependent.’ During the first phase of the pronatalist campaign, Mussolini wanted to increase both the quantity and the quality of the Italian race. The regime was aware that Italy had one of the highest rates of child mortality in Europe, followed by illegitimacy rates, which by the early 1920s had risen to 25% of children born illegitimate. This paved the way, for the foundation of L’Opera Nazionale per la Materinità ed Infanzia (OMNI), created by the regime in 1925. The Duce affirmed OMNI had the objective to reinforce family values and increase natality rates, while simultaneously decreasing mortality. According to Attilio Lo Monaco-Aprile, the state wanted OMNI to act when the “family was inexistent, inadequate or inappropriate.”
One of the first main battles for OMNI was the intervention of illegitimate babies. This had two main scopes: firstly, promote population growth and secondly encourage the idea of a united family. The first step to accomplish this goal was to prevent mothers from having an abortion and giving birth under clandestine conditions. Secondly, OMNI promoted breastfeeding and the nursing of newly-born babies, to minimize the chances of abandonment. Lastly, it was pivotal that the father recognized the baby to obtain support for it. OMNI following the year 1927, was declared to have prevented thousands of children from being illegitimate. However, this program didn’t have the success it claimed. By the early 1930s, about 77% of all illegitimate children were recognized, whereas in 1914 it was estimated to be 62%.
Nonetheless, OMNI also had other goals apart from decreasing illegitimacy. Its second greatest ambition was decreasing child mortality, by improving birth conditions. It recruited trained and motivated peasant classes in the upbringing of infants. It thought young mothers about hygiene norms and encouraged giving birth in OMNI where they would be taken care of. In fact, OMNI had hired professionalized pediatrics, obstetrics, midwifery, and even nursing, in order to improve birth conditions. However, after the racial laws of 1938, only white women were allowed to benefit from the help of OMNI, as Jewish children were thought to contaminate the pure Italian race. Overall, also this goal had some degree of success. By the mid-1930s 93% of all births still took place at home. Yet, infant welfare improved during the interwar years. The death rates for first-year life declined by 20%, from 128.2 deaths per thousand in 1922 to 102.71 deaths per thousand in 1940. Despite that, infant mortality in Italy was still 25% higher compared to contemporary France and Germany.
Regardless, of its main ambitions, the Opera was also established by the government for another scope: propaganda. OMNI was required to promote the healthy figure of the donna madre and emphasize the duty to reproduce for the state. OMNI was also responsible for the creation of Mother’s Day to encourage the “myth of maternity.” This organization also attempted to highlight the joys of rural life, and discredited urbanization, which according to Mussolini was it led to lower fertility. Secretly, OMNI was also a form of the police squad, as employees were to report any form of suspicious behavior from either the children or the mother.
Conclusively, OMNI failed in accomplishing its main goal; increasing birth rates. The birth rate dropped from 29.9 per thousand people between 1921-1925 to 24 per thousand between 1931 to 1935. This can be accredited to multiple factors, but most dominantly the lack of organization and limited finance. Many women felt they didn’t receive the services promised, and because Italy was still in a recession during the 1930s the government only provided limited support to this organization. OMNI continued to exist up until 1970, and while it had failed in promoting the pronatalist campaign, this organization was the first step into modernizing the Italian welfare system.
Relationships with the Church
On the eve of the unification of Italy in 1861, the Papal states resisted being incorporated into the state. Since then, the Pope and the state of Italy didn’t recognize each other’s sovereignty and had a distressing relationship. This changed when Mussolini came into power. According to the historian Kertzer, both the Pope and Mussolini necessitated each other. The Pope was losing dominance over Italy, while Mussolini was aware of the Church’s predominant influence over the Catholic populace of Italy, and knew in the long term it required the Church’s support to consolidate his power. In 1929, Mussolini and Pius XI ended the ongoing disputes and signed the Lateran Treaty, in which the Pope recognized the state of Italy and Rome as its capital. In return, Italy recognized the Pope as the head of the Vatican state and secured the Pope’s independence.
Upon ratification, Fascism didn’t lose the opportunity to spread its antifeminist campaign with the conservative and discriminatory positions of the Church. The Church supported Mussolini’s demographic campaign as it promoted the traditional patriarchal organization of the family and encouraged marriage and reproduction. In the mass, the Church would promote the figure of the donna madre as well as promote elements of the battle for births. The Church had previously some aspects of the pronatalist campaign, for example, in early 1926, the Osservatore Romano, a Vatican newspaper published a number of articles where it addressed the Church’s support for OMNI and emphasized how some social policies under fascism were in line with Christian ideologies. However, now the state and the Church worked simultaneously to promote population growth. Together, the Church and the State drafted the Rocco Code against the circulation of contraceptives and abortion. The Church also promoted women’s traditional role, through dedicated professionals and a well-established press. Pope Pius XI condemned birth control in their encyclical “Casti connubial” and the “Quadragesimo Anno” which both declared the superiority of men over women, whose function was to remain in the household. It moreover highlighted how women’s presence in the workplace was a threat to the family and the education of their children. Following the publishing of the encyclical, Agostino Gemelli, founder of the Catholic University in Milan and vice-president of the Società Italian di Genetica ed Eugenitica advocated the arguments proposed in the encyclical, and many of his arguments were published in the local newspaper throughout Italy. The Church acted as a perfect form of propaganda in promoting the demographic campaign, in particular in state schools.
The greatest Church’s success in promoting the battle for births can be attributed to its major influence on the lower class. To most of the peasantry, the Church was a source of information for the people, and a connection to the outside world making the lower class susceptible to indoctrination. The rural areas of Italy, where the majority of the peasanty inhibited, were seen by both the State and the Church as a source of high fertility. Therefore, both the Church and the regime emphasized the beauty of traditional life in the farms, while criticizing urbanization, by depicting the city as an area of sterility and lack of morals.
However, while the relationship between the Church and the government in promoting the pronatalist campaign may seem strong at first, the two institutions had different ultimate scopes. The Church while promoting some aspects of the battle for births disapproved of some others, and as a result, it was not always a successful tool to propagandize the battle. Overall, the relationship between the Church and the Fascist regime continued to have friction due to the growing competition between Catholic women’s organizations and expanding Fascist ideologies.
Conclusion
To conclude, the Fascist demographic campaign only had limited success in accomplishing its intended goals. While in 1922 there had been 30.7 births per thousand the figures continued to shrink up to its minimum of 22.4 births per thousand in 1936. The failure of this campaign can be credited to multiple factors. First, the “battle for births” was only one of the many “battles” the Fascists attempted to carry out during the 1930s. The high poverty and elevated desire for freedom by women were eventually too high to lead to the change which the Fascists sought. A campaign based on the appeals of the great ancient Roman Empire was ultimately not enough to bring about a radical change in the population. Moreover, another failure can be seen in the propaganda, as it only provided limited information about the overall goals of the campaign. Lastly, the regime also failed to provide the needed funding to help poor families to increase children's birthrates. However, while its ultimate goal had been a failure, the creation of active organizations, such as OMNI provided Italian women for the first time, with a newly established welfare system.
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