WOMEN UNDER FASCISM

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 33, 2 November 1929, Page 22

WOMEN UNDER FASCISM

very' different from before the war

The question is often asked: How are Italian women faring under Fascism.' How are they affected by the mass of new syndicalist legislation regulating the interests of workers of all classes?

So far as the syndicates are concerned it must be said at once that women hare nothing to complain of, for they are placed on a perfect equality with men. Signor Bottai, Under-Secretary qf State for Corporations, spoke of this recently in an interview granted to s a group of American business women visiting Home. „ . ' ~ “Italian men,” Signor Bottai said, “grealy appreciate feminine initiative m organisation which tends to raise the level of the different classes and bring about economic well-being. It is obvious that every nation has its own special methods of organisation dictated by tran- ■ sition, tendencies ,and the very nature of the country in question. In Italy we believe that we have. solved the problem 1 by bringing women into the syndicalist and corporative movement on a footing of equality with men. Women who labour in workshops or factories, or who have gained a professional degree, are entitled to be enrolled in a syndicalist ancFenjoy the same protection through the' syndicate as men! In this sense, as workers; there is no difference between the two.’.’ • -i (J '■/ . Fascist legislation provides for privileged treatment, for female workers in cases where such treatment is for the benefit of individual women, and through them of the community in general.! Thus mothers; who are factory hands or employees are' to leave off work one month before childbirth and not resume it .until a full month after, it being incumbent on employers to keep their places open for them. This two month's’ rest is made possible by ■ the Maternity ’ Insurance Benefit, which frees women -from financial eare during the period of enforced unemployment. It is now proposed to extend this measure to women engaged in heavy agricultural labour. An attempt is being made to grapple with the thorny question of female domestic servants, who cannot, for obvious reasons, be enrolled in a syndicate under a regular labour contract. It is proposed protection for this class should come under the head of welfare work and be’entrusted to the “Fasci Fcmminih,” who will see to it that women—especially young girls—rare well treated and not overworked while in domestic service, while servants, on their side, will be provided with a medical certificate guaranteeing their health and capacity for work and a further certificate of honesty and good conduct. Women have not the political vote m Italy. In 1925 Pa'rliament passed a law granting them the vote in municipal elections on the same terms as meh, but before they, could enjoy their new rights these were snatqjied from them by fresh legislation abolishing administrative elections altogether. This check, which was much felt by the;small group of educated women who had for years consistently fought for female suffrage, could hardly be called a general grievance, for the average Italian -woman displayed the utmost apathy about the municipal- vote and nine-ten ths of them refused to take the very small trouble of placing their names on the list. _ The Rome correspondent of the London “Observer” says“ltalian women all over the country, but especially in Northern and Central Italy, are very different to-day from what they were some 20 br 30 years ago. They have .developed; they have a broader outlook;' they have multiplied their interests and become independent in a way which, to most impartial observers seems wholly for good. But it is not Fascism that has

done this; it is the war, which broke up all the life they had known and taken for granted for generations thrust them suddenly into a new atmsophere where they were faced with new duties. “The women had to work, and they did it; painfully at first, afterwards increasingly well. They worked in banks, in offices, in businesses, in a way hitherto barred to them; they acquired freedom, and. broadly speaking, in acquiring it they learned to use it and make tlie best of their lives, married or unmarried. . , , , “Gone are the days when girls of the middle-classes passed their best years in waiting at home for a husband, condemned to idleness because work —except under great restrictions and limitations —was ‘infra dig.’ and drifting into a drear middle-age if the hope of marriage was not realised. Active, .intelligent girls tend more and more toward work or a career of some kind; their earnings help the family budget, and Prince Charming is met just as easily by mixing with the world as within the walls of a secluded home.

“Pendulums have a tendency to swing too far, and the fact that the high cost of life obliges many women to continue work after they are married has been publicly deplored more than once _ by Signor Mussolini,, though he. accepts it as a necessity under present circumstances. In his famous speech in the Senate on May 25 this year, in. answer to the Pope’s thesis that education belongs to the-familyhyijther than to the State. Signor Mussolini said: ‘To say that education belongs to the family is .to say something wholly at-variance with contemporary reality. The modern family, harassed by economic needs and the daily struggle for life, can no longer educate anyone.’ It is stated that so far as State .employees are concerned there is some idea of giving extra salaries to married men with families, so that the wives may be able to stop at home. , “The careers that chieflly attract Italian women are teaching—in which they excel—medicine and law. M omen doctors, especially for children, are beginning to increase in number, nnd the few women lawyers practising at the bar give a good account of themselves., n omen are also beginning to take to journalism —rather tentatively—and to business “The one profession which educated women practically bar is the nursing profession, and that in spite of much official propaganda, for Queen Elena and the Duchess of Aosta are keenly interested in nursing, and the Queen especially has done all she can to encourage women to take to a profession for which —in Italy—the best*class of woman is still greatly needed.”