PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND SPORTING ACTIVITY FOR WOMEN DURING THE FASCIST ERA Dissertation Zur Erlangung des sozialwissenschaftlichen Doktorgrades des Fachbereichs Sozialwissenschaften der Universität Göttingen Vorgelegt von Gigliola Gori Pesaro, Italien Göttingen, 2000 2 Berichterstatter: Prof. Dr. Arnd Krüger Mitberichterstatter: Prof. Dr. James Riordan Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 11 May 2000 3 Chapter 1 Introduction 9 1.1 The general framework 10 1.2 State of research 15 1.3 Methodology 18 Chapter 2 Outlines of Fascism as a culture of virility 23 2.1 Historical and ideological premises 25 2.2 The myth of the new man 30 2.3 Fascist institutions and aesthetics 35 2.4 Virility in literature and art 43 2.5 The last period: Fascism and Nazism 49 Chapter 3 Model women and physical training before Fascism 57 3.1 Nineteenth Century women: modesty and gymnastics 61 4 3.2 Emancipated women at the start of the Twentieth Century 73 Chapter 4 Model women during the fascist era 87 4.1 The revolutionary woman in early Fascism (1919-24) 89 4.2 The new woman of the regime: wife and mother (1925-35) 94 4.3 The militarised woman throughout the war years (1936-45) 102 Chapter 5 5. Fascism and physical training of the female body 115 5.1 Sports medicine and eugenics 118 5.2 Physical education and sport in school and university 139 5.3 Training of physical education teachers 168 5.4 Spare-time motor activity 181 5.5 Health resorts 189 5.6 Visibility through sports: contests and displays 200 5 5.7 Fashion, aesthetics and feminine form 219 Chapter 6 Sportswomen's profiles, biographies and interviews 233 6.1 The 'little Italian wonder': Ondina Valla 234 6.2 Biographies of eminent sportswomen 243 6.3 Oral interviews: living testimony to the past 249 Chapter 7 Conclusions 265 Footnotes 271 Bibliography 315 6 7 Chapter 1 8 9 1. Introduction This book is the result of research that started long ago. It aims to examine how much Fascism opened the way to female physical education and sport in Italy. Of course, by using all manner of available media, fascist propaganda had spread throughout the country and world the image of a strong nation of healthy sportspeople, including women. It will also examine the possible effect of this female 'sportivisation' on women's emancipation in a country founded on traditional paternalistic values and hegemony. The massive sporting phenomenon during the fascist era has already been studied by scholars of Fascism in general, and also analysed in specific books on sport, but the emphasis has been on the more prominent male sector of which Chapter 2 will give a general outline. In contrast, the female sector, that was underrepresented in fascist times, constitutes an interesting field for further investigation. Chapter 3 will portray the previous situation in terms of female physical culture, starting from the pioneering nineteenth century; it will try to qualify and quantify the impact of Fascism on Italian women's sport. The following Chapters 4, 5 and 6 will be broadly dedicated to this theme. They show that there existed different moral and even aesthetic model women, owing to an ambiguous policy which stressed maternity and, at the same time, demanded female engagement in society. 10 Women had to move strictly within an old-fashioned framework designed by medicine and eugenics, religious and traditional education, while, on the other hand, the country aspired to modernity and had made a myth of sport. General female emancipation, which had been promised by the fascist revolution and was actually occurring in other industrialised nations, found it hard to advance under the regime because of male hegemonic trends in the country. However, the very engagement of women in some sporting activity promoted and supported a gender emancipation, as will be demonstrated in the present work. 1.1 The general framework The Nineteenth Century, which is known as the period of the formation and strengthening of the newly-constituted Italian nation, was open to initiatives in favour of gymnastics on behalf of patriotism and hygiene, on the wave of the positivistic creed and scientific studies. Women were also involved in this new programme, although in a peculiar and restricted way. The culture of the female body brought a new life-style and gave women a certain consciousness of their identity and rights, helping their acceptance within the Italian society. However, in the tumultuous first decades of the Twentieth Century, the increase of nationalism, and the advent of new and revolutionary ideologies, supported the Italian participation in the Great War, and led to the rise of the subsequent fascist movement. In those years, a few women, by means of feminist movements, became more aware of their identity and rights. These new women, opposing the previous, traditional model inherited by the patriarchal culture of the Nineteenth Century, were more involved in work, politics and society. Nevertheless, under the subsequent fascist regime, the mass of women were forced to retire from public life and be submissive to men, but at the same time to strengthen their body and willpower within fascist organisations, adapting to the rather contradictory female models imposed by Mussolini and his hierarchy. In brief, this new woman had to stress and combine antithetical values in different ways, where respect for tradition meant 11 spirituality and tenderness, while modernity meant physicality and ruthlessness. However, the collective engagement in physical education and suitable sports contributed to renewing the traditional feminine image. Women became self-assertive, ready to leave house and family and to fight for ideological beliefs, in spite of masculine misogynous hegemony of the fascist era. The following lines will give an introductory look at the initiatives undertaken during Mussolini's government in terms of general physical education and sport. These were considered the main way to increase social health, fighting spirit, devotion and dedication, up to martyrdom in the fascist cause. In brief, Mussolini's aim was to forge new men, a myth of Nietschean origin that at the beginning of this century had found supporters in Italy among intellectuals, preparing the way to the advent of Fascism. Fascism intended to fully control Italian society as a whole by reorganising the life of the citizens of both sexes, including, of course, the education of the body and leisure activities. The democratic admittance and fruition of the different and numerous activities proposed by both the Ministry for Education, and the National Fascist Party, brought the great mass of Italians to practise all kinds of sport and other recreational activities, under the assistance and guardianship of the regime. The latter, although taking autonomy from the people in terms of organising all their time, gave them a rationalised and assisted leisure, which was financed by the Social State, in order to obtain the widest consensus concerning any and every political choice delivered by Fascism. In the gymnasium, stadium and sports ground, politics was banished in favour of a sort of 'activism' that attracted the masses because, at least, people could have a free choice, at no cost, of activities once only reserved for the highest classes. The common people could start to practice many kinds of sports, visit the beautiful Italian cities and the most fashionable tourist places - travelling by 'popular' cheap trains made available by the State. They could also send their children to the numerous holiday resorts owned by the State. Indeed people enjoyed the very pleasant sensation to be at the centre of the regime's attention. 12 Within the intentions of Fascism, the massive services offered for the development of physical education and sport had to accomplish the well- defined educational tasks of both regenerating the weak character of Italians by transforming them into a race of strong-willed, courageous new men, and removing citizens from a too private dimension of their life, in favour of a more social and collective one. Mussolini himself was not a true racist, but strenuously believed in and protected the Italian race - simply meaning the Italian people - as the concrete and material expression of the Nation, and aimed at forging Italians. In the Speech of 26 May 1934, addressed to the Chamber of Deputies, the Duce affirmed: "Fascism will devote itself to the Italian people's character more deeply, instead of furnishing their brain too sumptuously."1 Those tasks were suitably carried out by the schools and extra-scholastic social organisations, by means of a complete overhaul of the pre-existing juvenile institutions and by an unceasing action of propaganda through the press, broadcasts and newsreels. In fact, having very soon abolished those sporting societies which were independent and therefore outside the current fascist ideology - namely Boy Scout associations and those imbued with Catholicism or socialism - the National Fascist Party framed the sporting subject strictly into the Sports Charter of 1928. In the Sports Charter, the values of physical education and sport practised inside the numerous fascist juvenile organisations were firmly instilled. Moreover, the youth were urged to develop a competitive spirit with periodic cultural and sporting competitions, such as the Ludi Juveniles, Agonali, and Littoriali, which were spectacular displays receiving great appreciation. In so far as Italian women were also included in this wide programming, we will give a strong emphasis to this theme, which constitutes the main objective of the research. Actually, in the 1920s the involvement of women in sporting activities was encouraged by the fascist movement, according to the revolutionary spirit of the first period, which exalted the body and its actions. However, in the first part of the 1930s, when the regime was fully established, the campaign for demographic politics wanted women to be in 13 the home and become submissive wives and strong mothers of numerous children.