IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mes/jeciss/v59y2025i1p17-28.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bella Ciao and Women: A War for the Meaning of Motherhood in Italy

Author

Listed:
  • Cibele De Biasi
  • Felipe Almeida

Abstract

This study presents an institutional analysis of women’s participation in the Italian Resistenza during World War II, with an emphasis on the role played by motherhood. On the one hand, the official policy of Benito Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship relied on the notion of motherhood to oppress women, constructing their image as mothers of soldiers and breeders, providing more people for military recruitment, and expanding the power of the State. On the other hand, the Italian Resistance movement relied on motherhood to strengthen the bonds among women in the struggle for freedom and restructure the harsh reality imposed by the fascist regime. Hence, for both groups, the meaning of motherhood transcended beyond the biological functions of maternity—pregnancy, giving birth, and breastfeeding—and was understood as an institution that stands for specific means of caring reflected in social provisioning.

Suggested Citation

  • Cibele De Biasi & Felipe Almeida, 2025. "Bella Ciao and Women: A War for the Meaning of Motherhood in Italy," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 59(1), pages 17-28, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:mes:jeciss:v:59:y:2025:i:1:p:17-28
    DOI: 10.1080/00213624.2025.2455658
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00213624.2025.2455658
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00213624.2025.2455658?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mes:jeciss:v:59:y:2025:i:1:p:17-28. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/MJEI20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.