Empire,Gender and the ‘Home Front’ in Fascist Italy

This article considers the ways in which Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and the subsequent League of Nations sanctions shaped the tasks assigned to women within the Fascist Party. During the period of sanctions and, indeed, after their ending, right up until the Second World War, empire and women’s contribution to it became a core theme in Fascist propaganda. Female party members were mobilised for the imperial cause both as producers and as consumers and this led to a new emphasis on their importance to the nation. The activities of the Fascist women’s groups expanded considerably to include a range of new tasks such as running training courses on how to fight waste in housework, ‘autarkic cookery’ and so on. This article also discusses how young Italian women were prepared for a role in Italy’s ‘place in the sun’ through special courses created to train them for a future as colonial wives.     

Moral Dilemmas and Women’s Rights: the attitude of the Mothers’ Union and Catholic Women’s League to divorce,birth control and abortion in England, 1928–1939

In order to ensure that women benefited from their newly won rights as citizens in 1918 and 1928, the Mothers’ Union and Catholic Women’s League campaigned, along with feminist and political women’s organisations, to enhance the role and status of women in society. Difficulties emerged, however, when changes in public attitudes led to the liberalisation of the law in relation to divorce and birth control coupled with the growing demand within the women’s movement for safe and legal abortion. This article examines the arguments put forward by the two groups on how these reforms would undermine the role of women as housewives, mothers and citizens. It is argued that despite the fact that both groups appeared to be out of step with the wider women’s movement, they succeeded in highlighting a number of major social and welfare concerns facing many women at this time. As a result, they too made a significant contribution to the campaign for women’s rights during the interwar years.     

White collars and labour history: the contractual regime in Italy from the Liberal to the Fascist era, 1919–1945

This article aims to re-examine the history of non-manual labour, beginning with an analysis of the evolution of general norms governing the contracts of private sector workers in Italy, from the post-First World War period up until the creation of the fascist corporate system in the 1930s. The starting point is the 1919 law that defined the specific characteristics of white-collar workers, expressed as a bond of trust and delegation on the part of employers, from whom legally established and binding guarantees were issued. These guarantees included the offer of permanent employment and the right to compensation should said employment be terminated. This law was reformed during the fascist era, but continued to influence the collective labour agreements stipulated by unions under the regime, contributing to the sustained social status of white-collar workers, particularly in comparison to manual labourers. This article will highlight the difficulties in applying these standards, and the legal and union disputes they generated, exploring an area rarely discussed by historians, while also, as a case study, scrutinizing the more advanced situation of employees in the banking sector – a sector which, from a regulatory and contractual point of view, represented the white-collar élite, as it would continue to do for a long time after the Second World War.     

High School Context,Heterosexual Scripts,and Young Women’s Sexual Development

Adolescence is a critical period for sexual development, and previous research demonstrates that school cultures play an important role in shaping adolescent sexual behavior. However, little is known about the role of school context for developing sexual attitudes and sexual sense of self. This study explores how sexual cultures that emerge within high schools shape the sexual development of young women during the transition to adulthood. Using three waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a sample of 9th to 12th graders in U.S. schools in 1994–1995 who were surveyed in 1996 and in 2001 when they were 20 to 26 years old (N?=?1,017), this study measures school sexual cultures using the aggregated sexual beliefs and behaviors of students within the school. Multilevel analyses are used to explore the association between these school sexual cultures and young women’s sexual attitudes (perceived obstacles to using birth control, guilt and shame about sex, and expectations of sexual pleasure) in adolescence and their sexual experiences (equal initiation of sex with partner and frequent orgasm with partner) in adulthood. Overall, the results suggest that schools play an important role in young women’s developing attitudes toward sex and contraception. High school sexual cultures are also associated with young women’s sexual behavior in adult heterosexual relationships, as young women who attended schools with students who had higher levels of religious attendance or guilt and shame about sex were less likely to report being an equal initiator in their adult relationships. However, the relatively small impact of high school sexual cultures on young women’s sexual experiences in adulthood, particularly in terms of sexual pleasure, suggests that more proximal contexts and relationships may play a more significant role in shaping their current sexual behaviors.     

The Constitution of Afghanistan and Women’s Rights

This article argues that women’s human rights were and are being violated in Afghanistan regardless of who governs the country: Kings, secular rulers, Mujahideen or Taliban, or the incumbent internationally backed government of Karzai. The provisions of the new constitution regarding women’s rights are analysed under three categories: neutral, protective and discriminatory. It is argued that the current constitution is a step in the right direction but, far from protecting women’s rights effectively, it requires substantial revamping. The constitutional commitment to international human rights standards seems to be a hallow slogan as the constitution declares Islam as a state religion which clearly conflicts with women’s human rights standards in certain areas. The Constitution has empowered the Supreme Court to review whether human rights instruments are compatible with Islamic legal norms and, in case of conflict, precedence will be given to Islamic law. Keeping this in view, it is argued that Afghanistan’s ratification of the Women’s Convention without reservations has no real significance unless Islamic law dealing with women’s rights is reformed and reconciled with international women’s rights standards.     

Launching a New Journal: Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600–2000

This article traces the founding and development of an online journal, Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600–2000 (WASM), which Sklar & Dublin began editing in 2003. A quarterly journal, a database, and a website, WASM publishes edited collections of primary documents and full‐text sources that focus on the history of women and social activism in the United States. The journal’s editors discuss their experience in launching the journal and reach out to scholars in the UK to expand the transnational and comparative dimensions of the project.     

Law’s Vulnerability,and Vulnerability in Law

Vulnerability acts as a touchstone in this issue as we find our contributors reflecting on its intersection with gender and sexuality in different ways. Saeidzadeh draws out the significance of misrecognition in her consideration of responses to transsexuality in Iran, while Doonan highlights the potential pitfalls of relying on situational vulnerability in her critique of anti-trafficking legal discourse in the US. Lindsey considers the legal potential of situational vulnerability as a tool to address the ‘persistent failure to take action against abuse’ in the UK. Durojaye and Oluduro contribute to the recent revitalisation in asking ‘the woman question’ by drawing on African law and literature to flesh out the development of a gender-sensitive, substantive equality approach from the jurisprudence of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights as it addresses vulnerability to violence. The reviewers continue this international conversation as they address recent contributions on sexuality, family formation and social security.     

Women’s History and Oral History: developments and debates

Women’s history and oral history grew up together. Each developed from a commitment to reveal and reverse, to challenge and to contest what were perceived to be dominant discourses framed by gender and class. In this article the relationship between these two endeavours is explored. Beginning with the 1960s the influence of feminist approaches to research and representation are given due consideration and acknowledgement. In reviewing changes over the last four decades the dilemma for women of being both subject and object in research is explored. The tension in this dilemma is discussed in relation to developments in relation to subjectivity in the interview, the process of doing oral history, the developments in public history and remembering in late life. The article concludes with an overview of new work in the field and concedes that, whatever issues remain unresolved, oral history continues to interest and attract researchers working in a wide range of disciplines with the promise of yet more theorised and gendered explorations of the past in years to come.