Books like Feminine Fascism by Julie V. Gottlieb

Examining the forgotten attempt to halt fascism, this biography reveals Violet Gibson’s daring shot at Mussolini in 1926 and her aristocratic Irish background, her engagement with pacifism, mysticism, and socialism, and the broader historical context.

"Italy has been made; now we need to make the Italians," is a long-familiar Italian saying. Mussolini was the first head of government to include women in this mandate. What the fascist dictatorship expected of its female subjects and how they experienced the Duce's brutal but seductive rule are the main topics of Victoria de Grazia's new book. The author draws on an unusual array of sources--memoirs, novels, and reports on the images and events of mass culture, as well as government statistics and archival accounts--to present a broad yet detailed characterization of Italian women's ambiguous and ambivalent experience of a regime that promised women modernity, yet denied them freedom. Always attentive to the great diversity among women and careful to distinguish fascist rhetoric from the practices actually shaping daily existence, de Grazia moves with ease from the public discourse about maternity and family life to the images of femininity in commercial culture. The first study of women's experience under Italian fascism, this book offers a compelling treatment of the making of contemporary Italian society. With acute comparisons between the sexual politics of Italian fascism and developments elsewhere, including Hitler's Germany, de Grazia illuminates trends and dilemmas common to the construction of female citizenship in twentieth-century societies.

In the early seventeenth century, when Spanish interests often competed with those of the House of Austria, three women in the court of Philip III of Spain - Empress Maria, Philip's grandmother; Margaret of Austria, Philip's wife; and Margaret of the Cross, Philip's aunt - worked behind the scenes to win favor for the causes of the Austrian Habsburgs. In The Empress, the Queen, and the Nun, historian Magdalena Sanchez offers an intriguing examination of the political power wielded by these three women. Each used traditional networks within the court and acted within the boundaries of acceptable women's roles to frustrate Philip's favorite, the Duke of Lerma, in his project to keep Spanish Habsburg wealth in the Iberian peninsula instead of allowing it to be siphoned off to support Austrian Habsburg campaigns.