(Mirror.)

Among the groups lined up in ordered ranks eager pay homage to Mussolini, for the first time we saw a large section of young women with very unusual clothing—safari suits and pith helmets. This display was a living representation of the new policy aimed expressly at girls that had been inaugurated in 1937. Indeed, these girls had been carefully selected for the occasion from among those who had felt the benefit of courses and camps for colonial preparation.

These were set up in line with detailed programmes issued by the secretariat of the National Fascist Party, working closely with the Fasci Femminili (open to the masses since the early 1930s), and the Istituto Fascista dell’Africa Italiana. The news was given considerable prominence in the régime’s press, for example L’Azione Coloniale, with an abundance of commentary and photographs.²²

[…]

After the war of aggression against Ethiopia, which began on 3 October 1935 and ended on 5 May 1936 with General Pietro Badoglio’s conquest of Addis Ababa, the régime felt the need to unite all the forces that could be considered valid supporters of imperialist policy.

To this end, a widespread media campaign was launched, targeting female subjects, who should become pillars of the new image of Italian society that Mussolini wanted to portray. Large gatherings of women in the capital, creation of the so‐called Giornata della Fede [Day of Wedding Rings],²⁵ awards to prolific mothers: they appeared more and more frequently on the front pages of newspapers, being praised for their supreme dedication to the Duce and the destiny of the fatherland.

The moral fortitude and abnegation of Fascist women were exalted in their commitment to the economic battle against the embargo on foreign products, but it was with the prospect of changing the strategy in the colonies that the Fascist leaders pointed directly to the involvement of the female element as a guarantee of stability and morality.

The (re)population of Ethiopia²⁶ was becoming problematic: the men who had moved there (soldiers, farmworkers and labourers) had indulged in excesses of sexual unruliness, adopting inconvenient practices such as the madamato,²⁷ the frequentation of prostitutes, or conceiving children with African women.²⁸ The régime could no longer tolerate such abuses, which did little in defence of the race, an increasingly propagated and widespread ideal.

In the beginning of 1937, it was therefore decided to start a vast press campaign that spoke explicitly of “colonial women”. The first phase of this project was to preach the validity and goodness of the transfer of unmarried women to Africa in order to contract marriages with the existing settlers; the second phase, which involved a much more complex and articulated project, brimming with directives and regulations issued directly from the Fascist Party top brass, focused on the education of young women, training them for life in the colonies.

(Emphasis added.)

It might be surprising that many Fascists would later deviate from their staunch conservatism by allowing women more flexibility in terms of mental and physical education, for example:

There was a specific and consistent focus on physical education, an activity that had now become a necessary feature of the model of fascist woman, being essential for eminently eugenic purposes.³⁹

[…]

In fact, it was hoped that more and more professional women would decide to move out to the farthest reaches of the Fascist empire, and the skills most in demand were enumerated in detail. These included “the healthcare and chemistry professions […]. In engineering, mechanical and electrical, women graduates qualified for that professional exercise will also find a place as the plants progress”.⁴⁷

One should be careful not to assume that this flexibility was something that the Fascists granted out of altruism or some change of heart. A more plausible explanation is that this flexibility was a means of dealing with a labour shortage, and imposing Fascist colonialism on a preindustrial region in Africa was going to be much more challenging than instituting Fascism in a more industrial country like Italy, where the ruling class was very permissive, so Realpolitik was necessary and the Fascists had to get the most out of their women settlers. Switching to traditional gender rôles was still perfectly welcome:

The remaining part of the manual covers hygiene and sanitary issues — childcare, breastfeeding, weaning, baby hygiene, house cleaning, food preparation and first aid — closely linking them to the work of nurturing, ever the province of women.