The highest rank that was ever open to women in the Italian fascist party (PNF) was that of ispettrice nazionale (national inspectress). From 1937 onwards, the ispettrici provided a group leadership for the party's rapidly expanding women's section. They were not, of course, the only women to play a political role in the fascist ventennio. There were others who exercised more behind-the-scenes influence, but the ispettrici were different since they held high-ranking, official positions. They broke new ground as the first group of Italian women, apart from a small number of socialists like Anna Kuliscioff, to hold prominent positions in a political party. Prior to the rise of fascism, female political engagement had mainly taken place not in parties but in autonomous women's organizations, many of them feminist. Although in practice the ispettrici’s actual political power was always constrained, their symbolic importance, as public, visible emblems of women's presence in the political sphere, should not be underestimated. As such, a better understanding of their role seems pertinent to broader discussions of women's gradual, but often laborious, advance in the political sphere in twentieth-century Italy.
Historians, however, have shown little interest in them and, to date, there has been no systematic investigation of these national hierarchs.Footnote 1 This reflects the fact that, despite undoubted increased historiographical interest in the lives of women under fascism in recent decades, the role of women in the party itself remains a relatively neglected topic. Popular, journalistic books on women and fascism have similarly largely ignored the ispettrici, instead selecting as noteworthy ‘women of the blackshirt regime’ more exciting figures like film stars, Mussolini's lovers, royalty, partisans, and the female auxiliaries in the Second World War – Italy's first female soldiers.Footnote 2
This historiographical neglect of the ispettrici is doubtless primarily because, as prominent female fascists, they constitute a rather unpalatable topic for the feminist historian. Moreover, the fragmentary state of the documentation relating to them in the fascist party archives further reduces their appeal to the researcher. The biographical information included here has had to be pieced together from a variety of sources. For a handful of these women, a ‘personnel file’, including information on their pay and sometimes correspondence or even a curriculum vitae, has survived in the national party archives but most of these folders are empty or simply missing. Consequently, it has been necessary to search quite widely for biographical information, both across and beyond the party archives. Inevitably, the resulting picture is uneven with far richer information for some women than others.
The ispettrici do, nonetheless, merit a closer look, and enough can be gleaned from archival and press sources to build up a group portrait of them, looking at who they were, their ideas and motivations, and how they managed to rise to this prominent position. On all of these topics, the existing historiography sheds only limited light. As will be demonstrated below, moreover, some of the scant historiography that does exist on women's role in the PNF has muddied the waters with some factual errors that have led to an underestimation of the extent to which women took on party leadership roles in a voluntary, rather than paid, capacity.
I
The first ispettrici nazionali were appointed in January 1937. They were the female equivalent of the all-male corps of ispettori nazionali (likewise a new rank). The women were not, however, admitted to the ranks of the ispettori but instead formed a separate, parallel rung of their own in the party hierarchy. In the PNF, women's activities were always kept separate and strictly gender-defined.
The reason for their appointment was the recent growth of the fasci femminili (FF), the women's wing of the party and the only way that women could join it. In the 1920s, the FF had been barely tolerated by male party hierarchs, many of whom rejected the idea of women having any sort of political role at all.Footnote 3 Many saw fascism, with its squadrist, combatant origins, as intrinsically male, and male fascists themselves frequently used the word ‘virile’ to describe their politics.Footnote 4 From the early 1930s, however, with the launch of PNF secretary Achille Starace's new policy of ‘going to the people’, there was a massive recruitment drive and female membership began to rise rapidly.
During the early years of fascism, the FF had had, albeit briefly, a single national leader. In late 1924, in the aftermath of the Matteotti crisis, the former Red Cross nurse and moderate feminist Elisa Majer Rizzioli (1880–1930) was appointed to the new position of inspectress of the fascist women's groups. She, unlike the later group of ispettrici, was given a seat on the fascist party's national directorate. The hostile manoeuvrings of male fascists who wanted to deprive the women's groups of any power and influence, however, rendered this experiment short-lived. In January 1926, PNF secretary Roberto Farinacci, a prominent opponent of the ambitions of some female fascists to have a meaningful political role, closed down the inspectorate. After this, the FF never again had a single, national leader, and no other woman was ever again to sit on the party directorate. They lost any autonomy they had previously enjoyed and were subordinated to the male party hierarchy. At local level, fascist women continued to organize their own activities (mainly forms of politicized welfare) but with little encouragement from local fascist men.
From the early 1930s, however, female party membership began to be actively encouraged and party sections were instructed to set up FF groups. Numbers were further boosted by the foundation in 1933 (initially as part of the fascist unions, then transferred to the PNF in 1934) of the sezione massaie rurali (rural housewives section), a specialized FF section for rural women, particularly peasants. In 1937, a second section was added, the sezione operaie e lavoranti a domicilio (SOLD – section for workers and homeworkers), to mop up any remaining categories of women, including servants.Footnote 5 The two sections involved the mainly middle-class FF women (who ran them) in a wide range of new activities like organizing poultry-farming competitions.
The series of wars that fascist Italy became embroiled in further fuelled the exponential increase in FF activities. Once Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, women were mobilized in the ‘resistance’ to the League of Nations sanctions. The FF busied themselves with promoting ‘autarchic housework’ and ‘the fight against waste’ and urging women to ‘buy Italian’. The massaie rurali were exhorted to increase production of foodstuffs and raw materials to replace imports. This trend was further enhanced once Italy joined the Second World War.Footnote 6 FF activities now embraced tasks like assisting the war wounded, soldiers' families, bombing victims, and refugees; air defence; promoting urban ‘war vegetable gardens’; and supervising workshops where military uniforms were made.
All this upsurge of activity required co-ordination but, in party headquarters, after the fall of Majer Rizzioli, the FF were left with no real central leadership and the women's organizations were overseen by a male hierarch assisted by Angiola Moretti, Majer Rizzioli's erstwhile secretary. Moretti held the position of secretary to the fascist women's groups until approximately 1930. In 1932, Rachele Ferrari del Latte, a fascist stalwart from Milan, began work in PNF headquarters, partly assigned to organizational duties for the FF. By the late 1930s, such a slender operative core no longer sufficed. The decision to resolve this problem not by simply recruiting more clerical assistance but by creating a new prestigious rank testifies to the growing importance of the work done by the women's organizations.
II
The role of the ispettrici was both administrative and political. As their job title suggests, they carried out inspections of provincial FF federations but they also regularly toured around Italy delivering rousing speeches to the female party faithful or the public. This often meant travelling far from home. In June 1938, for example, Laura Marani Argnani (from Reggio Emilia), was sent to Lecce and Wanda Gorjux Bruschi (from Bari) to Vicenza, lengthy trips for both of them.Footnote 7 Such journeys were doubtless aimed at imposing a real national discipline on the party, rather than simply allowing each ispettrice to speak in nearby provinces. The ispettrici also played a role in the ceremonial aspects of the regime. In 1939, for example, four ispettrici took part in the national leva fascista (‘flying up’ ceremony) for the youth organizations.Footnote 8 All carried out provincial inspections and gave speeches, and most also wrote regularly for the party press, but otherwise their role varied, each assigned a different area of FF work. A few worked in central party headquarters – issuing orders to local federations, liaising with other national organizations, and so on. Most, however, remained at home, often combining their new role with continued service as provincial fiduciaries (FF leaders in each province).
Being an ispettrice brought these women a visible, public role and a good deal of responsibility. It also brought financial rewards. By 1940, an ispettrice’s salary was L.3,000 per month, a considerable sum for a woman at the time (although their income was only topped up to this amount if they also held other paid, public employment of any kind).Footnote 9 Their actual power was, however, constrained by the fact that they always had to answer to male hierarchs. From January 1937, for example, the first ispettrici worked under the deputy party secretary (and future party secretary) Adelchi Serena.Footnote 10 This hierarchical subordination was underscored by the brief description of their role in the FF regulations, issued in the ‘fascist year’ of 1939–40, which stated (Article 6): ‘The ispettrici of the women's organizations of the PNF are nominated by the secretary of the PNF and their role is to carry out the tasks that he entrusts to them.’Footnote 11
This situation was in part a product of the structure of the PNF itself. The party had been gradually marginalized during the 1920s in order to strengthen Mussolini's own position. By the 1930s, it had lost its previous dynamism and was increasingly a cumbersome, bureaucratic, top-down organization. Its leaders were appointed from above and its activities, mainly concerned with ‘the organization, control, and political education – in the fascist sense – of the masses',Footnote 12 dictated from above.
Both sexes were, however, far from equally disempowered in the party: although men dictated to women what the FF should do, no high-ranking party women had any say in what men should do. Their authority, such as it was, was only ever over lower-ranking women. The ispettrici were appointed to look after the women's organizations, effectively a female ghetto within the party. Tellingly, none of the ispettrici was ever admitted to the PNF's national directorate. According to Victoria De Grazia, in 1938, ispettrice Clara Franceschini's name was put forward for a seat on the directorate but nothing came of it.Footnote 13
De Grazia has argued that women were given no real say in the party, not even consulted on major decisions about their own organization, such as the founding of the two sections for peasant and working-class women.Footnote 14 Although it is doubtful whether the archival sources are really there to confirm this statement, it does seem to be broadly correct.Footnote 15 The situation was not, however, static since the advent of war made the activities of the women's organizations more important, as part of the ‘home front’. A clear indication of this was the foundation, in January 1941, seven months after Italy joined the Second World War, of a new central FF management committee (consulta centrale dei fasci femminili). Admittedly, this committee was chaired by the (male) PNF secretary, and three other male hierarchs had seats on it, but the rest of its membership, which included all the ispettrici, was female.Footnote 16
The paperwork from this committee does not seem to have survived in the archives but its remit suggests that women's opinions were valued in a consultative framework at least. This was doubtless because most of the ispettrici were women who brought to the table a wealth of knowledge about how the FF actually worked at grass-roots level. It was pretty safe, moreover, to delegate at least some decision-making to this particular group, as a closer examination of those appointed demonstrates.
III
A total of twenty-six women were nominated to the position of ispettrice nazionale, although, for reasons that will be explained below, nine of them never actually took office. The first two appointments (on 13 January 1937) were Clara Franceschini and the nursing and welfare expert Itta (Giuditta) Stelluti Scala Frascara, provincial fiduciaries of the northern rice-growing province of Pavia and of Rome respectively. On 10 September 1937, they were joined by three other provincial fiduciaries: Laura Marani Argnani – a successful and energetic organizer from Reggio Emilia, Olga Medici di Vascello Leumann from Genoa, and the journalist Wanda Gorjux Bruschi from the southern province of Bari.Footnote 17 A further appointment came on 5 November: the war widow Teresita Menzinger di Preussenthal Ruata – fiduciary in Perugia.Footnote 18 None of these four moved to Rome but combined their new role with continuing service as provincial fiduciaries. In February 1939, Sofia Bertaina della Chiesa di Cervignasco, provincial fiduciary from Cuneo, was addedFootnote 19 and, on 30 October 1939, Lola Carioli Condulmari (Milan), although the latter appointment was then almost immediately revoked.Footnote 20
Another six were added in the months prior to Italy's entry into the war. On 24 December 1939, Angiola Moretti and Rachele Ferrari del Latte – both with experience in party headquarters – became ispettrici.Footnote 21 The other four were all provincial fiduciaries: Ignazia Cavalli D'Olivola di Pettinengo (Turin) appointed 7 December 1939;Footnote 22 Amalia Oddone Mazza (Novara) appointed 24 January 1940;Footnote 23 Anna Maria Dalla Rosa Giusti (Cremona) appointed 7 March 1940;Footnote 24 and Gina (Luisa) Federzoni, former fiduciary for Rome, appointed 2 May 1940.
Gina Federzoni's term of office proved brief since, in August 1940, all the ispettrici in post were sacked and only some reappointed, initially with the new designation of dirigenti per le organizzazioni femminili del Pnf (leaders of the PNF women's organizations). Italy was now at war and a more streamlined, efficient system was needed. Only five of the previous team (Medici Del Vascello, Moretti, Franceschini, Ferrari del Latte, and Giusti Dalla Rosa) were reappointed. They were joined by two new faces – Laura Calvi Roncalli (Bergamo) and the social work expert Licia Abbruzzese.Footnote 25
This drastic reordering did not, however, last. Soon after the title of ispettrice reappeared and numbers rose again, so the ‘reorganization’ was effectively a sort of mini-purge. By January 1941, there were eleven ispettrici in total. Three worked at party headquarters – Franceschini (put in charge of the FF and the rural housewives; assistance to soldiers' families; training for the ‘fascist home visitors’; liaison with the maternal welfare agency ONMI); Ferrari del Latte (responsible for ‘culture, propaganda, and the press’); and Abruzzese (SOLD; training to prepare women for the ‘colonial life’; liaison with the party mass leisure organization). The increasing workload at party headquarters is clear from the fact that they were assigned three female assistants – Bice Parmeggiani, Lidia Quadrio, and Ines Ponticelli – all given the rank of ‘fiduciary’ (hitherto reserved for provincial leaders).Footnote 26 The eight other ispettrici, at this date, were Medici del Vascello; Giusti Dalla Rosa; Moretti; Menzinger; Marani Argnani; Gorjux Bruschi; Calvi Roncalli; and Maria Pia Pironti. Of these, the only new face was Pironti, who also held a high rank in the Italian Red Cross.Footnote 27 After this, the only newcomer for some time was Lina Eramo Gozzi, long-serving fiduciary of Mantua, appointed on 6 December 1941.Footnote 28 Both she and Pironti were assigned to party headquarters, albeit part time in Pironti's case. Strikingly, over this whole period, only two southerners – Gorjux Bruschi and Pironti – had been chosen.
At the eleventh hour, on 18 June 1943, two of the existing ispettrici, Gorjux Bruschi (following the unexpected death of her husband on 6 June) and Calvi Roncalli, stepped down and there was a new wave of appointments, nine in total, reflecting both an ever-expanding workload and a startling failure to grasp the realities of the situation: the end of the regime was but a month away.Footnote 29 Those appointed included eight provincial fiduciaries (all instructed to combine both jobs) – Vendramina Marcello Brandolini (Venice); Teresa Marogna de’ Lutti (Modena); Maria Ortona Valentini (Naples); Angiola Teresa Rosso (Enna); Bianca Giuliano (Foggia); Vittoria Luce Danzetta (Reggio Calabria); and Piera Gatteschi Fondelli (Rome). Giusti Dalla Rosa (who had stepped down in January 1943) was also reappointed on this date.
One noteworthy member of this group was Gatteschi Fondelli, who was soon to rise to prominence as the leader of the women's auxiliary forces in the Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI): in effect, Italy's first female army commander.Footnote 30 Also worth mentioning is the inclusion of a woman who does not appear to have ever been a provincial fiduciary, Countess Pia Pallotta Garzia Civico – announced simply as ‘the mother of a gold medal holder’. The holder of this military decoration was her son, the high-ranking hierarch Guido Pallotta, who had perished ‘heroically’ in Africa in 1940.Footnote 31 Because of the allied invasion of Sicily and the subsequent fall of Mussolini it seems unlikely that any of this final cohort of ispettrici ever took office, and, for this reason, this article concentrates on those who actually did.
IV
Some of the women who became ispettrici were of middle-class origin. Gorjux Bruschi's father, for example, was a teacher and Franceschini's a town clerk. For the middle-class women, like Lino Eramo Gozzi – a widowed schoolteacher with two dependent childrenFootnote 32 – a wage packet could be essential. This was far from the case, however, for all the ispettrici. For Laura Calvi Roncalli, a salary was so unimportant that, from November 1942 onwards, she grandiosely donated her monthly pay-packets to her local fascist party welfare activities.Footnote 33 Likewise, Itta Stelluti Scala Frascara commanded such wealth that, in May 1940, she was able to give a large building and its grounds (valued at L.100,000) to the party youth organizations for use as a holiday centre.Footnote 34
Both of these women were countesses. Indeed, about half the ispettrici, including Pironti, Cavalli D'Olivola, and Bertaina della Chiesa di Cervignasco, were aristocrats. Some had married into, rather than being born into, the aristocracy: intermarriage between aristocrats and wealthy members of the middle class was increasingly common in this period of declining revenue and status for the nobility. Marchioness Olga Medici del Vascello, for example, who was the daughter of Napoleone Leumann, a wealthy, paternalist textile entrepreneur, owed her title to her husband,Footnote 35 as did Baroness Teresita Menzinger. Even Angiola Moretti, a cobbler's daughter, managed to stride up the social scale by marrying, in 1938, the landowner and ‘fascist of the first hour’ Count Nestore Carosi Martinozzi.Footnote 36
There were, of course, many noblemen among the regime's hierarchs (mainly rallying to the regime once it was firmly in power, rather than as ‘fascists of the first hour’),Footnote 37 but the sheer numbers of female hierarchs from the aristocracy does set them apart from their male counterparts. One reason was doubtless the far greater numbers of paid jobs the party offered men, enabling men of more varied origins to make a career out of fascist politics. Many of the women, conversely, had only been able to qualify for national rank by having the sort of financial security that enabled them to gain the necessary experience through years of unpaid service to the party. A striking number of the provincial fiduciaries who did not become ispettrici were similarly aristocrats.Footnote 38 This dominance by the aristocracy and the upper middle class in FF leadership positions had, moreover, been a feature from fascism's earliest days.Footnote 39
Welfare, a core activity of the FF sections, was a traditional domain of the female aristocracy and the chance to play a leading role in this was certainly at least one of the motivations for activism for many of these women. Aristocrats, moreover, were likely to have the confidence and air of authority needed to stand their ground faced with patronizing male hierarchs. Countess Sofia della Chiesa di Cervinasco, for example, as a provincial fiduciary was not afraid to send numerous complaints to party headquarters about the dearth of support her local party federation gave to welfare initiatives.Footnote 40
The majority of the ispettrici were married or widowed. This is perhaps unsurprising given that it was easier for married than single women to have a public role in this period. There were some unmarried women, like Franceschini and Pironti, but this was unusual. At least five were widows: Ferrari del Latte's husband Guido had been a sansepolcrista (one of the founders of the fascist movement) and Oddone Mazza's husband Filippo a high-ranking Militia officer. Menzinger and Eramo Gozzi were both war widows. Marani Argnani's husband (a railway official) had died more prosaically of gout. Widowhood could be a convenient status for this kind of activity since, as married women, widows could be active in the public sphere without compromising their respectability, yet were unconstrained by a spouse. It also could mean financial independence or, in some cases, the need to earn. The regime, moreover, venerated war widows: they appeared in numerous ceremonies as symbols of the fascist cult of war.
Quite a number of the ispettrici were mothers. In keeping with the regime's veneration of motherhood, it was not unusual to depict female hierarchs as paragons of maternal virtue. Gina Federzoni, for example, was described in a gushing article in 1932 as follows: ‘A most affectionate wife and mother, she represents the typical Italian woman. Woman in the highest sense of the word, able to reconcile the duties of her own social position with the tenderness of family life, the intellectual life with the humble care of the home.’Footnote 41 In practice, however, wealth and social position enabled some of these mothers to offload their maternal duties onto domestic staff. In a memoir, Olga Medici del Vascello's daughter Elvina (b. 1914) remembered that, for most of her childhood (in a castle near Turin), she saw her parents for only ten minutes in the mornings and half an hour each evening. For the rest of the time she and her brother were cared for by nannies and private tutors. Of her mother she said: ‘Mama, unlike Papa, was very sweet and she let me do whatever I wanted, but I didn't see her much.’Footnote 42 Only from the age of fifteen was she allowed to eat breakfast with them and she began to dine with them at eighteen. Such arrangements considerably freed up her mother's time.
Many of the ispettrici came from families with a history of patriotic activism. Marani Argnani's father Federigo, for example, had fought for the nation during the Risorgimento and this doubtless helped forge her extreme patriotism and unquestioning loyalty to the regime. Many others, like Countess Ignazia Cavalli d'Olivola, who was the granddaughter of a Risorgimental military hero, similarly had patriotic forebears.
Most of the ispettrici were middle aged. The youngest, in their late thirties when appointed, had been young during the ‘fascist revolution’, part of the ‘generational revolt’ that characterized early fascism. Franceschini, Abruzzese, and Moretti, for example, were, at the time of their appointments as ispettrici, 37, 38, and 40 respectively. Others were older, like Gorjux Bruschi who was 48 when appointed, Medici del Vascello 55, Menzinger 59, and Marani Argnani a striking 72. For this older cohort, the experience of the First World War had been formative. Federzoni (b. 1892), for example, had been awarded the ‘war cross’ for nursing service at the front.Footnote 43 Ferrari del Latte (b. 1890) had been active in irredentist and monarchist organizations during the war and an energetic wartime propagandist, publishing numerous patriotic pamphlets and press articles and touring round giving speeches.Footnote 44 Marani Argnani (b. 1865) received a silver medal from the War Ministry for her work mobilizing the staff and students of her teacher training college for activities like making clothing for the troops.Footnote 45 Calvi Roncalli (b. 1888) had been vice-president of the League of the Sowers of Courage, a nationwide women's organization which aimed to rally the population for the war effort and combat ‘defeatism’.Footnote 46
Levels of education were mostly good for women of their day. Quite a few were graduates. Menzinger (born in 1878 in Bergamo to a family of well-known doctors), for example, was one of the first female medical graduates at Siena University.Footnote 47 Other graduates included Bertaina della Chiesa, Eramo Gozzi, and Gorjux Bruschi (who had two degrees, one in History and Geography and one in Literature). Ferrari del Latte had spent three years at university although apparently without graduating. The middle-class ispettrici like Moretti, Ferrari del Latte, and Franceschini generally had teaching qualifications of various kinds and, indeed, the professional backgrounds of those who had prior experience of paid employment were heavily dominated by teaching. Countess Itta Stelluti Scala had attended (although not completed) the international course of training for public health nurses at Bedford College in London.Footnote 48
V
The route to national rank was paved, for most of these women, with years of unpaid, voluntary service to the party. This fact has been somewhat obscured in the existing historiography which has tended to assume that many of these voluntary roles were, in fact, paid ones. This gives the impression that some female hierarchs were, at least in part, just women looking for a job. De Grazia, for example, has asserted that, by the late 1930s, the visitatrici fasciste (fascist home visitors) – a much more lowly rank – had become professionals, ‘wore uniforms, and were salaried’.Footnote 49 Helga Dittrich-Johansen likewise states that the visitatrici were: ‘Promoted to the grade of social workers, organized, and salaried.’Footnote 50 My own extensive research in PNF archives, however, has never uncovered the least evidence that these women were paid and indeed their sheer numbers (one source, for example, states that there were 25,950 in the province of Genoa alone in 1936)Footnote 51 makes this highly improbable. De Grazia is correct in her assertion that training was provided for them but this was simply to ensure that this army of volunteers had some knowledge of ‘modern welfare’. Their ‘uniforms’ were the standard FF uniforms which, from January 1937, they were required to wear for home visits to emphasize their status as party envoys, just with a special badge.Footnote 52
Similarly, Dittrich-Johansen has mistakenly assumed that the secretaries of local FF groups (just above the home visitors in the party pecking order) were paid. She argues that ‘from the second half of the 1930s, hundreds of secretaries from remote, peripheral fasci got access to the unprecedented social status which came from holding a paid, public office’.Footnote 53 The many widows among them, she argues, were ‘driven, less by faith in an idea, than by the far more prosaic opportunity of supplementing a tiny survivor's pension with a salary and the expenses that section leaders had access to’.Footnote 54 She may be correct that some enjoyed the prestige of the position but local secretaries were, in fact, unpaid. Many were primary teachers, for whom fascist activism became, to a degree, a normal part of their job, a ‘voluntary activity’ they were unable to avoid. Even the much higher-ranking provincial fiduciaries only began to receive salaries in October 1940.Footnote 55
Of course, party federations did offer some paid work for women, mainly seasonal employment in summer holiday camps for poor and sickly children or clerical roles in local party offices. Another paid role appeared in 1938 – that of ‘technical leader’ for the rural housewives section, trained at the party's own college near Rome – but only one was appointed in each province.Footnote 56 Overall, paid work was limited and most of the numerous administrative, welfare, and political tasks of the FF federations were done by volunteers. For most ispettrici, therefore, appointment to national rank was not the culmination of a long clamber up the party career ladder since this barely existed for women (apart from, to some extent, in Rome) before 1940.
Only in a minority of cases were the long years of service to the fascist cause, which were generally necessary for promotion to national rank, years of paid service. Clara Franceschini, for example, had combined her role as (unpaid) provincial fiduciary in Pavia (since 1925) with various welfare-related paid positions.Footnote 57 Another example was Angiola Moretti who had been employed by the PNF from 1925 to 1936, first as FF secretary, then as ispettrice of the scuole superiori femminili fasciste (the three party colleges offering vocational training for certain professions deemed ‘suitable for women’). For most of this time she also had a teaching job, for which she drew a second salary.Footnote 58
But even those who apparently ‘worked’ for the party were not necessarily paid by it. The example of Rachele Ferrari del Latte is instructive.Footnote 59 Born in Milan, she began work as a primary teacher in 1907 and by 1928 was a headmistress. After participating in the Fiume expedition, she joined the PNF in November 1923 and then helped found many of the first Milanese FF groups. From 1926 to 1930, she sat on the directorate of the Milanese FF, and from 1926 to 1932 was in charge of the Milanese fascist girls' groups. During the entire ventennio she also earned money by a prolific output of journalist writing: pamphlets, magazine articles, and even some (dreadful) poetry, all with a highly propagandistic tone. Ferrari del Latte was a widow from a very fascist family: both her husband Guido del Latte and her father Arturo Ferrari had been ‘fascists of the first hour’. When her father died in 1932, she became head of family with responsibility for various relatives. She then moved to Rome where she began working full time at PNF headquarters both for the FF and the fascist association for the families of the fallen, mutilated, or wounded for the revolution. This work seems to have been unpaid and she relied on her earnings from her teaching post (from which she was officially seconded on full pay, just as she had been in Milan for part of the time she ran the girls' organizations). Financially, the secondment was damaging as it forced her to take a step down to the pay grade of an ordinary class teacher. Correspondence in her file in the PNF archive shows how she tried to use her political connections to get a promotion in her teaching grade (blocked because she was not actually doing the job) or otherwise to obtain funding (asking her political connections, for example, to buy paintings by her father) and this led eventually to her appointment to the well-paid rank of ispettrice nazionale. In her case, a long history of working for the party had not, in practice, been financially advantageous, until she was rewarded by promotion to ispettrice.
These three examples were all women for whom the appointment as ispettrice was the culmination of some sort of career path in the party, women who could perhaps be described as what Dittrich-Johansen has termed ‘professional fascists’.Footnote 60 As ispettrici, they all worked at central party headquarters. They were, however, not typical. Most, instead, rose to prominence through long years of voluntary toil as provincial fiduciaries, proving their worth by building up local FF federations. It is likely, therefore, that most were confident, tenacious women of not inconsiderable political acumen and administrative ability.
A good example was Laura Marani Argnani. From 1929 onwards, she was provincial fiduciary in Reggio Emilia, a role she combined with a full-time job as principal of the local teacher training college. An elderly widow, she dedicated herself wholeheartedly to both activities and, under her energetic rule, this became a flagship province in terms of female party membership, a striking achievement in an area with strong socialist traditions.Footnote 61 Likewise, Wanda Gorjux Bruschi, appointed on the same day as Marani Argnani, had been provincial FF leader in Bari since 1926, another left-wing area which required a tough attitude to succeed. She had similarly combined political work for the party with a career, in her case as a writer and journalist.Footnote 62 She combined her role as ispettrice with continuing service as a provincial FF leader until January 1943, when she finally stepped down as provincial fiduciary.Footnote 63
Of course, one of the prerequisites for becoming an ispettrice was an ability to steer a way through the complex world of fascist party politics, with its factions, intrigues, and back-stabbings. In this context, political patrons could be useful. The political career of the ambitious Angiola Moretti, for example, was undoubtedly assisted by the fact that she was able to count on powerful political patrons like party secretary Turati and the prominent Roman politician and academic Nazareno Padellaro. Likewise, Rachele Ferrari del Latte could rely on the patronage of Starace. Some ispettrici could make use of connections forged in the heady days of early fascism but more established social networks could be equally useful and this was doubtless true for many of the noblewomen.
Some of the ispettrici were married to men of influence in the fascist regime and this may have been a factor facilitating their appointment. Olga Medici del Vascello's husband Giacomo, for example, was, from 1935 to 1939, Mussolini's cabinet secretary. Gina Federzoni's husband Luigi (whom she married in May 1918) was a prominent political figure, albeit one with a somewhat problematic relationship with the regime.Footnote 64 This is not true, however, of all the ispettrici and it is important to stress that these were far from simply honorary positions doled out to the wives of fascist bigwigs. In some cases (such as Gorjux BruschiFootnote 65 and Marani Argnani), the ispettrici themselves were considerably more enthusiastic about fascist politics than their husbands were.
Although the patronage system means that it would be naive to see the choice of these particular women as simply the product of a meritocracy, many ispettrici were in fact well qualified for the position, with extensive organizational and political experience, particularly those with years of service as provincial fiduciaries. Some were chosen for specialized competencies. Clara Franceschini, for example, who had considerable experience mobilizing and providing welfare for seasonal rice-weeders in her home province of Pavia, was initially recruited primarily to run the section for rural women. Similarly, both Stelluti Scala and Pironti brought expertise on nursing issues. Menzinger was, from 1936, president of ANFCDG (the national fascist association for the war dead). This organization, which pre-dated the rise of fascism, was progressively subordinated to the politics of the regime until, in 1941, it was absorbed into the PNF.
The route to national rank was somewhat different for some of the group appointed in June 1943 for by then there was a whole cohort of women who had been working as paid fiduciaries at provincial level. Once on the payroll, provincial fiduciaries became if anything even more subordinate to the party hierarchy. Previously, fiduciaries had emerged from their local environment where they could rely on their own networks and connections. Now, however, as salaried party employees, they could be transferred to another province far from home at the convenience of their superiors and this undoubtedly weakened their position.
VI
The limitations of the sources available (particularly the fact that of the twenty-six ispettrici, only one – Gatteschi Fondelli – left a memoir)Footnote 66 render it difficult to get to grips with the inner beliefs of these women. It would, of course, be foolish to argue that there was only one reason – such as political conviction, power, or money – why women were interested in becoming fascist hierarchs: this was a varied group and the meaning of acceding to this elevated rank was similarly varied for different ispettrici. The case for economic motivations, however, does seem to have been overstated in the historiography. For many, becoming an ispettrice was less about money than about the prestige and sense of self-importance the role gave them, the chance to make a mark and, of course, the hope of treading the corridors of power.
Some of the ispettrici, like Amalia Oddone Mazza Ferrario, and Clara Franceschini, were ‘fascists of the first hour’. Their commitment to the politics of fascism is hard to doubt (although that politics had, of course, itself changed considerably by the 1930s). Indeed, some ispettrici were exemplars of fascist zeal and loyalty to Mussolini. Laura Marani Argnani was so patriotic that her teacher training college students joked that she wore tricolour underwear.Footnote 67 She was certainly someone who saw fascism essentially as a faith, something to follow totally and unquestioningly. Similarly, for the war widow Teresita Menzinger (her husband, the much decorated Guido Menzinger, had fallen at Costesin in May 1916),Footnote 68 fascism quite simply made sense. As her grandson (similarly named Guido) commented: ‘As a war widow, she felt that only the Right appreciated and recognized those in her particular situation.’ He also recalled that ‘She always used to talk about the respectful attitude early fascists had to relatives of the war dead they met on the street. All her life she saw herself as a widow, she always wore a veil and dressed in black.’Footnote 69 During her presidency of ANFCDG, she completed its subordination to the regime, even to the extent of purging it of its ‘non-aryan’ members.Footnote 70
The situation, however, was slightly less straightforward for some of the other ispettrici. Far from all were fascists of the first hour. Lina Eramo Gozzi and Itta Stelluti Scala who both joined the PNF in 1927, when the regime was already firmly in power, were by no means unusual.
It is possible that some of them, particularly the noblewomen, may have been, at heart, more patriots than dyed-in-the wool fascists. Gina Federzoni, for example, seems to have been more a conservative elitist than a true fascist. According to her daughter Elena, she had reservations about what she saw as the upstart plebeians in power: her daughter claimed that ‘We only went once to Villa Torlonia, to visit the Mussolini children: Mamma said they were too badly behaved.’Footnote 71 Unlike some of the other ispettrici, Federzoni had served as a provincial leader (in Rome) for only two years (1931–3). Her daughter maintained, moreover, that she had accepted this role reluctantly and only to protect the career of her husband.Footnote 72 This perhaps explains why she was the ispettrice with the shortest term of office (May–August 1940).
Levels of heartfelt fascist zeal may have varied but all were nonetheless willing to act as mouthpieces for the regime, trotting out the latest propaganda themes for the FF membership. All gave speeches and many wrote for the press in fascist vein. Both Gorjux Bruschi and Ferrari del Latte were experienced writers who produced plenty of propaganda for the press. In 1938, for example, Gorjux Bruschi wrote that half-hearted enthusiasm was not enough. Women should throw themselves into their mission of patriotism and motherhood, disseminating fascist ideas and helping to forge a new civilization.Footnote 73 Similarly, in 1938, after approvingly citing Mussolini's slogan for women: ‘You must be the guardians of the hearth’, Ignazia Cavalli d'Olivola wrote of the Duce's ‘sense of infinite love for his people’.Footnote 74
As these examples suggest, the ispettrici were not the most ideologically interesting of prominent fascist women. They mainly tended to rehash fascist propaganda without much personal rethinking. In their writings it is, for example, difficult to discern any challenge, however muted, to fascist gender ideas. The only exception was, to an extent, Wanda Gorjux Bruschi, undoubtedly one of the more intelligent women among them, who did veer onto almost feminist positions at times, expressing the opinion, for example, that some women needed to work and that working could be beneficial for women.Footnote 75 But this was not a group likely to attempt to reinvent fascism in some sort of way for potential trouble-makers were generally not chosen for this job.
None seem to have been prominent feminists before the rise of fascism, although some of the older ispettrici had doubtless mixed with moderate feminists in the past and may have themselves had moderate feminist beliefs. The Sowers of Courage, the patriotic organization in which Calvi Roncalli had been active, for example, was run by the moderate feminist Sofia Bisi Albini. Wanda Gorjux Bruschi seems to have been the only one of them who had written on the ‘woman question’. In their writings as ispettrici, they were generally prepared dutifully to trot out the official line of women as ideal mothers and wives, however much their own lives contradicted this. In 1935, for example, Marani Argnani, in many ways herself a born leader, argued in a speech that ‘fascist women will always cook men's dinners and darn their socks: nor will they aspire to leadership roles nor look for personal glory’.Footnote 76
The rights of women were, in any case, firmly off the agenda by the late 1930s and these women's prominent public role was made palatable by presenting it less as politics than the more acceptable ‘welfare’. Of course, feminists too had emphasized welfare but they had seen it as a path to ‘emancipation’. There was no space for such ideas in the PNF by 1937. The disappearance of a feminist agenda from the fascist women's press (which had existed in the early years) had not happened overnight but, by this time, was more or less complete. Welfare was now entirely presented as selfless dedication to a higher cause – the nation.
VII
After the fall of Mussolini in July 1943, the fate of the ispettrici was mixed. In August, Clara Franceschini lost her job at ONMI – the maternal welfare organization – due to her political past, and this presumably happened to all employed by party organizations. Interestingly, when the Political Police were asked to comment on this sacking, they argued that Franceschini should not be dismissed as she had so much useful welfare management experience, and, in their view (sweeping aside her long service to fascism), she had ‘not been politically active except in welfare’.Footnote 77 After 8 September, however, Franceschini showed her true colours: according to Maria Fraddosio, she was one of only five ispettrici who remained loyal to Mussolini, the others being Ferrari del Latte, Marani Argnani, Abruzzese, and Gatteschi Fondelli.Footnote 78
Rachele Ferrari del Latte continued her role as a propagandist, making, for example, a radio broadcast ‘To the women of Italy’ on 3 December 1943, in an effort to rally women to the RSI.Footnote 79 Licia Abruzzese became the leader of the gruppi fascisti repubblicani femminili, effectively a continuation of the FF. Gatteschi Fondelli became Italy's first female general as leader of the fascist women's auxiliary forces. Marani Argnani, who was very elderly by now, seems to have played no particular role.
The apparent defection of the rest is partly explicable by the complexities of the war situation (some doubtless simply found themselves on the wrong side of the front line) and by the predominance of noblewomen. Few aristocrats, of either sex, remained loyal to the Duce after his dismissal by the king. Their failure to rally to the RSI, therefore, is probably more to do with their devotion to the monarchy than to any fundamental ambivalence about the politics of the regime. Gina Federzoni's husband was one of the plotters who overthrew Mussolini in July 1943 and, condemned to death by the RSI, fled abroad. Some quickly reinvented their politics: according to one source, by March 1944, Countess Itta Stelluti Scala Frascara was in prison in Macerata accused of ‘assisting English prisoners’.Footnote 80
In the post-war years, perhaps unsurprisingly, none of these women seem to have played a political role, although political silence did not necessarily mean a change of heart. Marani Argnani, for example, who retired to live quietly in a convent in Bologna, remained faithful to her political beliefs for the rest of her life,Footnote 81 as did Gatteschi Fondelli. Wanda Gorjux Bruschi was sentenced to two years in internal exileFootnote 82 but most seem to have escaped unpunished for their service to the regime, although the lightness of the post-fascism purge makes this unsurprising. Some continued to pursue a welfare agenda in a changed context. Stelluti Scala Frascara, for example, published a book on nutrition in 1954.
VIII
An examination of the role of the ispettrici nazionali serves to illustrate both the essentially weak position of women in the PNF as well as their expanding role and importance during the late 1930s and early 1940s. The very fact that the fasci femminili were led by a group, not an individual, was, of course, itself a problem. They might have been able to assert themselves more effectively with a single leader, the equivalent of someone like Armida Barelli in the Catholic women's organizations.
The creation of the new office of ispettrice constituted official recognition of the growing importance of the FF, but this recognition came at a price. In the 1920s, party women had had some autonomy and, even in the 1930s, at provincial level, fiduciaries were local women with considerable scope for creating a local fiefdom, albeit under the watchful, often belittling, gaze of male provincial hierarchs. After 1940, they were increasingly subordinate to the centre, cogs in an ever-expanding wheel, who could be transferred at short notice to a post elsewhere.
At this point, during the war, some sort of ‘career ladder’ for women did emerge,Footnote 83 but Helga Dittrich-Johansen's description of female fascist hierarchs as ‘Pnf professionals’ fits only a minority of the women examined here. It does apply, in certain respects, to some of the middle-class ispettrici, for whom this work was a form of paid employment, necessary for their economic survival and for whom promotion to national rank was an important professional accolade. But most of them had no need to earn a living. For the latter group, the position meant primarily prestige, a certain amount of influence, and a chance to further their own agendas in areas like welfare policy. Many doubtless saw the extra stripe on their uniform badges as official recognition for their personal achievements during long years of often thankless service as provincial fiduciaries. It would be quite erroneous, however, to see the first group as women primarily motivated by the need to get a job and the second as the ‘real fascists’: all five ispettrici who stayed loyal to Mussolini after 1943 came from this ‘professional’ group. Motivations for political engagement are, of course, always too complex to reduce to single explanations and doubtless a range of factors should be taken into account, but paid employment was not really the issue for most of them, for the PNF offered slim pickings for women in this respect. Whatever their motives for taking on this role, however, the ispettrici as a group were women who, in public at least, dutifully followed official positions, and were selected primarily for their loyalty and organizational skills rather than for any sort of originality of thinking.
The fascist regime did, despite its misogynist ideology, open up new spaces for women and the very existence of the ispettrici nazionali is a good symbol of this. However, the constraints on these women was hardly a good precedent on which post-war women politicians could build. Instead, it was one more likely to act as a brake on women's future political authority. Despite their high rank, they were not allowed to interfere in any matters that did not concern women (or children) whereas male fascists were allowed to think for both sexes. This problematic precedent was just one of the many hurdles faced by post-war democratically elected women and it might help explain why the newly elected female parliamentarians of the post-war republic found it so difficult to make their mark in areas not deemed ‘women's issues’.Footnote 84 The first attempt by a woman to intervene in a parliamentary debate on foreign policy, for example, was greeted with hostility and contempt by the journalists present.Footnote 85
