Women, Gender and Fascism in Europe, 1919-45

by Kevin Passmore (Editor)

What attracts women to far-right movements that appear to denigrate their rights? This question has vexed feminist scholars for decades and has led to many lively debates in the academy. In this context, during the 1980s, the study of women, gender, and fascism in twentieth-century Europe took off, pioneered by historians such as Claudia Koonz and Victoria de Grazia. This volume makes an exciting contribution to the evolving body of work based upon these earlier studies, bringing emerging scholarship on Central and Eastern Europe alongside that of more established Western European historiography on the topic. Women, Gender and Fascism in Europe, 191945 features fourteen essays covering Serbia, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Hungary, Latvia, and Poland in addition to Germany, Italy, France, Spain, and Britain, and a conclusion that pulls together a European-wide perspective. As a whole, the volume provides a compelling comparative examination of this important topic through current research, literature reviews, and dialogue with existing debates. The essays cast new light on questions such as womens responsibility for the collapse of democracy in interwar Europe, the interaction between the womens movement and the extreme right, and the relationships between conceptions of national identity and gender.

Genres: History, Feminism

304 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2003

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's about 60 pages of this that i didn't read. I had used this book before when writing a paper on Franco Spain and Flamenco and found it incredibly useful. I have been doing research and work (Yes, I still write papers and articles after college) on the Balkans and the Baltic States. If someone is trying to get information on women within the Fascist movement this should be the first place you go. From there you can use their sources to try to get more. Also, i found the essays in this book to be easier reads (though some were still hard) than your average history essays, which is always a plus.

[Hilary]

This book consists of a whole bunch of essays written by different authors, divided into chapters of fascist countries. Each medium-length essay explains womens' role in the building, maintaining, and ending of the fascist rule in the country named. Overall, the essays are pretty good, with hidden info that you can't find anywhere else, but somehow each essay was a serious struggle to read; none of them flowed. This lack of flow also applied to the chapter-by-chapter transitions, and overall this book needed to be read in small chunks (part of an essay at a time) to hold my interest.

[Louise Bray · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is book is made up a series of essays, each by a different author and about a different country. Some were quite interesting, while some were very bland (in my opinion). Many of them were structured in a bit of a weird way, flitting back and forth between years, which made them quite difficult to follow. I think this book is a good reference point if you're researching the topic, but it was a bit too difficult and to read for me.