Fascism used gender roles traditionally rooted in Italian culture, reinforcing a system penalising the social position of women. During the autarky (1935-1940), technical education was oriented towards theoretical-practical activities designed to train Italian personnel specialised in chemical-commodity-related, zootechnical, and agrarian activities [sectors]. Simultaneously, women’s curricula continued to favour specialisations considered truly feminine like sewing, weaving, medical support and child rearing, maintaining the concept of biological determinism. These skills remained confined within an alleged “woman’s nature”, subject to masculine activities.
The wartime necessities of the 1930s and 1940s put this ideology into contradiction: the men’s call to arms led to a massive mobilisation of women workers into the military industry, creating a crisis in the hierarchical prerequisites of education that were traditionally reserved for female students.
In Italy, the outbreak of war prevented the implementation of the reform desired by Giuseppe Bottai, Minister of National Education. In February 1939, the Minister presented the Carta della Scuola (Charter of the School) to the Grand Council of Fascism, a very ambitious reform project that would have transformed the Italian school system, project composed of twenty-nine programmatic declarations.
In reality, of all the reforms proposed, only one was implemented. In 1940, Bottai introduced scuola media (middle school) for both boys and girls, which replaced the first three years of Ginnasio (Gymnasium), Istituto Tecnico (Technical Institute) and Istituto Magistrale (Teacher Training Institute). Scuola media was intended for those who would continue their studies.
Only in 1962 scuola media became the same for everyone. In 1940, those who did not continue their studies after the age of fourteen, or who pursued a professional path, could attend vocational schools. These, however, were never actually established by Bottai, and those who did not continue their studies enrolled in vocational preparatory schools. Carta della Scuola also intended to clearly separate male and female education. The twenty-first declaration was dedicated to female education. According to this declaration, after scuola media, girls were to attend a three-year Istituto femminile (female institute) and a two-year Scuola di Magistero della donna (Women’s Teacher Training School). These institutes were meant to prepare female students «for the governance of the home and for teaching in nursery schools».
The Giornata della Tecnica (Technology Day) initiative also moved along this path. The Giornata della Tecnica was a guidance day that the government introduced in the autumn of 1939: its purpose was to promote enrollment in technical institutes and vocational schools. The event was held throughout Italy for four years, from 1940 to 1943, and was usually organised on a Sunday in late May or early June. On these occasions, the technical institutes and vocational schools showed the public the work done by their students. Works exhibited for girls and women’s schools were essentially tailoring or embroidery.
The conferences and speeches given for the occasion also reinforced this vision of women’s education. In 1941, during the Giornata della Tecnica in Sassari, a literature professor stated: «No activity (and consequently no school) is precluded to women, who can often compete on equal terms with men. But in the Fascist environment, it is preferable for her to fulfill her mission as wife, mother, and aid for men; a mission for which she has to prepare herself in a good time and appropriately by attending her school, which will serve to educate her virtues for the supreme purpose of introducing the solid nucleus of the family – as a cardinal element – into the mighty organism of the nation».