WOMEN UNDER FASCISM
THE FACTORY AND THE HOME EXTRA SALARIES TO MARRIED MEN The question is often asked: How are Italian women faring .under Fascism? Are they being enCcrtlraged to tread the road leading to emancipation? And how are they affected by the mass of new Syndicalist legislation regulating the interests of workers of all classes? So far as the syndicates tire concerned, it must be said at once that women have nothing to complain of, for they are placed on a perfect equality with men.» Signor Bottai (Under Secretary of State for Corporations) spoke of this in an interview granted to a group of American business women visiting Rome:— "Italian men,” he said, “greatly appreciate feminine initiative in 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 transition. tendencies, and the very nature of the country in question. In Hilly we believe that we have solved the problem 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 Syndicate and enjoy the same protection through the Syndicate as men. In this sense, as workers, there is no difference between the two.” It should be added that Fascist legislation provides for privileged treatment for female workers in eases where such treatment is for the benefit of individual women and, through them, of the community in general. Thus expectant mothers who are factory hands, or employees, are to leave off work one month befd’re childbirth and not resume it until a full month after, it being incumbent on employers to keep their places open for them. This two months* rest is made possible by the Maternity Insurance Benefit, which frees women from limincialXcare during the period of enforced unemployment. It is now proposed to extend this measure to women engager- in heavy agricultural labour. Domestic Servants. And to-day, as I write, I see that an attempt is being made to grapple witli 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 that protection for this class should come under the Head of welfare work and be entrusted to the “Fasci Femminili,” who will see to it that women—-especially young girls—are well-treated and not over-worked while | in 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 in Italy. In 1925 Parliament passed a law granting them the vote in municipal elections on the same terms as nien, but before they could enjoy their new rights these were snatched 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-tenths of them refused to take the very small trouble of placing their names on the list. The New Spirit. Italian women all over jthe country, but especially in Northern and Central Italy, are very different to-day from what they were some tWciity or thirty 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 and thrust them suddenly into a new atmosphere where they were faced with new duties. They 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 learnt to use it and make the best of their lives, married or unmarried. Gone are the days when girls of the middle-class 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 dreary mid-dle-age if the hope of marriage was not realised. Active, intelligent girls tend more and more towards work or a career of some kind; their earnings help the family budget,, and “Prince Charming” is met just as easily by mixing up 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 to 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 family rather 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.” lam told 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. Women and the Professions. The careers that chiefly attract Italian women are teaching (in which they excel), medicine and law. Women doctors, especially for children, are beginning to increase in number, and the few women lawyers practising nt the bar give a good account of themselves. Women are also beginning to take to journalism—rather tentatively—and to business careers. The one profession which educated women practically bar is the nursing profession, and that in spite of much official propaganda, for Queen Elepa and the Duchess of Aosta are keenly interested in nursing, and
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Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 83, 2 January 1930, Page 19
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1,043WOMEN UNDER FASCISM Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 83, 2 January 1930, Page 19
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