There is another little known but exceedingly important aspect of fascism. It has an inimical attitude towards women, and sees them as inferior to men.

This fact is recognizable in words and statements of 20^th century fascist leaders. For instance, Mussolini's statement to Maurice de Valeffe, a reporter for the French publication Journal, on Nov. 12, 1922, openly belittled women:

There are those who say that I intend to limit the right to vote. No! Every citizen will keep his right to vote for the Rome Parliament… Let me also admit to you that I am not thinking of extending the vote to women. There would be no point. My blood opposes all kinds of feminism when it comes to women participating in state affairs. Naturally a woman shouldn't be a slave, but if I conceded her the vote, I'd be laughed at. In our state, she must not count.57

During the serious economic crisis beginning in 1930, Mussolini ordered that women should leave their places of work. Because he saw women as "thieves who reach out to steal men's bread, and responsible for men's unproductiveness."58

The Duce's views on women are strikingly apparent in an interview he granted the French journalist Hélène Gosset in 1932:

Fascism is mired by a hatred of woman, whom it regards as inferior.

Women must submit… Even if they have an analytical power, they have no synthetic one. Have they ever put up an architectural structure? I am not talking about a temple: a woman could do no better than erecting a hut. Women are strangers to architecture, the synthesis of all the arts: and their destiny ends at this point.59

Through various measures, restrictions on women in the workplace were also imposed in education. For instance, a decree of Jan. 30, 1927 forbade women in high school from taking classes in literature and philosophy. A decree passed in 1928 resorted to legal measures to oppose women's education, and women were prevented from becoming directors of middle schools. Female students were required to pay double the fees in schools and universities.

A decree which Mussolini put before Parliament on Nov. 28, 1933 declared, "State bodies are empowered to impose conditions excluding women in advertisements for exams to take on new employees.. They must impose limits against a rise in the number of female workers in public offices…"60 According to a decree instituted by force of law on Sept. 1, 1938, women could only make up 10 percent of the workforce in public offices.

In Nazi Germany the status of women as "second class citizens" was even more pronounced. The German Education Ministry decided that women should make up no more than 10 percent of high school graduates. In 1934, only 1,500 out of every 10,000 female high school graduates were allowed to proceed to higher education. In 1929, there were 39 National Socialist education bodies. Only two of these were for women. Laws were passed banning women from taking Latin classes in middle school: before having even finished high school, they were prevented from going on to university.61

These decrees did not just represent a social ideology or merely imposed regulations to foster a division of labor, they were actually the implementation of the biological dogma of Nazism. Maria A. Macciocchi, author of Eléments pour une Analyse du Fascisme comments that in the eyes of the Nazis, women were a kind of animal.62 According to such a philosophy, women were a primitive race, at a lower level in biological terms.63

THE DARWINIST ROOTS OF THE HOSTILITY TO WOMEN

The root of this prejudice among fascists towards women was, as in so many other matters, Darwinism. Fascists did not merely appropriate the idea of the inequality between the races from Darwinism, they also adopted the idea that men were superior to women.

In The Descent of Man, Darwin wrote that women some of whose "powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilisation."64 According to Darwin, evolution meant "a struggle of individuals of one sex, generally males, for the possession of the other sex."65

In the Descent, Darwin also wrote, "Man is more powerful in body and mind than woman, and in the savage state he keeps her in a far more abject state of bondage than does the male of any other animal; therefore it is not surprising that he should have gained the power of selection."66 Evolution was in the hands of men, and women were basically passive. As a result, women had evolved less and were more primitive, for which reason women were dominated by instinct and emotions, which was their "greatest weakness."67

Darwin maintained his views on the superiority of men and its importance for evolution throughout his life. He had this to say about this issue also by referring to his cousin Francis Galton's theories:

The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man's attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can woman-whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands. If two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music (inclusive both of composition and performance), history, science, and philosophy, with half-a-dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison. We may also infer, from the law of the deviation from averages, so well illustrated by Mr. Galton, in his work on Hereditary Genius, that if men are capable of a decided pre-eminence over women in many subjects, the average of mental power in man must be above that of woman.68

Darwin's views could also be recognized in his personal outlook towards women. He described a woman's role in marriage as "constant companion, (friend in old age) who will feel interested in one, object to be beloved and played with-better than a dog anyhow-Home, and someone to take care of house ..."69 It is evident that Darwin looked at women and the institution of the family from a materialistic standpoint. There was not a trace of love, respect, loyalty, affection or compassion in his outlook.

The evolutionist and materialist Carl Vogt, a contemporary of Darwin and a Geneva scholar of the mid nineteenth century, also held disparaging views regarding women. "We may be sure that wherever we perceive an approach to the animal type the female is nearer to it than the male" he wrote. "Hence we should discover a greater [apelike] resemblance if we were to take a female as our standard."70

Many evolutionists, following Darwin, have continued to maintain that women are inferior to men, both biologically and intellectually. Some evolutionists have even classified men and women as two distinct psychological species: males were homo frontalis, females homo parietalis.71 One evolutionist, Elaine Morgan, noted that Darwin had motivated men into researching the reasons why women were "manifestly inferior and irreversibly subordinant".72

Paul Broca (1824-1880), an evolutionist physicist and anthropologist, was particularly interested in the differences in intelligence and brain size between men and women, ascribing their inferior intelligence to the smaller size of their brains.

Another follower of Darwin, the evolutionist social psychologist Gustave Le Bon, wrote;

In the most intelligent races ... are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed male brains. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion. ... Women ... represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and ... are closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man. They excel in fickleness, inconsistency, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason. Without a doubt there exist some distinguished women ... but they are as exceptional as the birth of any monstrosity, as, for example, of a gorilla with two heads; consequently, we may neglect them entirely.73

Therefore, at the basis of fascism's disparagement of and contempt for women lies the theory of Darwinism. Mussolini's taking away of women's social rights, and Hitler's building of "breeding farms" to reproduce the superior race and obliging young girls to sleep with SS officers, are all reflections of fascists' attitudes to women. Both Darwinists and fascists are enemies of women. They see them as an inferior and backward species, and both despise them, as well as employing discriminatory and oppressive methods against them.

This fascist perspective is completely at odds with the ethics of the Koran. God has commanded in the Koran that women should be cherished, respected, and protected. In addition, He has shown examples of women with superior morals, such as Mary and the wife of Pharaoh. In the eyes of God, superiority does not lie in race, sex or rank, but in closeness to Him and strength of belief. In a number of verses of the Koran, God has revealed that all believers will receive their reward without discrimination between men and women.

Their Lord responds to them: "I will not let the deeds of any doer among you go to waste, male or female-you are both the same in that respect…" (Koran, 3:195)

Anyone, male or female, who does right actions and is a believer, will enter the Garden. They will not be wronged by so much as the tiniest speck. (Koran, 4:124)

Anyone who acts rightly, male or female, being a believer, We will give them a good life and We will recompense them according to the best of what they did. (Koran, 16:97)

However, as religion was abandoned, these truths were abandoned with it, and in their place were provided superstitions such as fascism and Darwinism, in which all forms of discrimination based on sex or race are seen as justified.

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57. Maria A.Macciocchi, Eléments Pour Une Analyse du Fascisme, Paris, UGE, 1976, p.108
58. Maria A.Macciocchi, Eléments Pour Une Analyse du Fascisme, Paris, UGE, 1976, p.126-127.
59. Maria A.Macciocchi, Eléments Pour Une Analyse du Fascisme, Paris, UGE, 1976, p. 126.
60. Maria A.Macciocchi, Eléments Pour Une Analyse du Fascisme, Paris, UGE, 1976, p. 128-129.
61. Maria A.Macciocchi, Eléments Pour Une Analyse du Fascisme, Paris, UGE, 1976, p. 132-133.
62. Maria A.Macciocchi, Eléments Pour Une Analyse du Fascisme, Paris, UGE, 1976, p.134.
63. Maria A.Macciocchi, Eléments Pour Une Analyse du Fascisme, Paris, UGE, 1976, p. 163.
64. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, The Modern Library, New York, p. 873.
65. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1859 (1897 edition), p. 108.
66. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, The Modern Library, New York, p. 901.
67. Stephanie A. Shields, American Psychologist, "'Functionalism, Darwinism, and the Psychology of Women; A Study in Social Myth.'' Vol. 30, no.1, 1975, p. 742.
68. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, The Modern Library, New York, p. 873.
69. Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882 (Edited by Nora Barlow), W. W. Norton & Company Inc., New York, 1958, pp. 232-233.
70. Roger Lewin, Bones of Contention, Simon and Shuster, New York, 1987, p. 305.
71. Rosaleen Love, "Darwinism and Feminism: The 'Women Question' in the Life and Work of Olive Schreiner and Charlotte Perkins Gilman" in David Oldroyd and Ian Langham (Eds.), The Wider Domain of Evolutionary Thought, D. Reidel, Holland, 1983, pp. 113-131.
72. Elaine Morgan, The Descent of Woman, Stein and Day, New York, 1972, p.1
73. Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1981, p.104, 105.