Status Updates From Le donne nel regime fascista

Through fascist-promoted female sports culture far more women practiced sports of some kind. On fascist Saturdays in the 1930s, school groups massed for calisthenics, and there were regional and national meets in track and field, basketball, and swimming. After staying out in 1932, Italian women began training for the Olympics, and at Berlin in 1936, Ondina Valle won Italy's only gold medal in the 80 metres hurdles

the dictatorship sustained and sometimes even reinforced legal measures that treated women as chattels of male and family honor. Men were more likely to run away or be unfaithful, yet women were still punished more harshly than men on the grounds that their immoral conduct was more damaging to the family well-being. Hence, an adulteress, at accusation of her spouse, could, if convicted, spend up to two years in jail