ABSTRACT
In October 1937 a group of 25 young women aged between 20 and 30 enrolled at the Sant’Alessio Women’s Agricultural College in the Agro Romano ‘at the gates of Rome, but right in the country’.1 For the next academic year they were to devote themselves to the study of farming as well as subjects like ‘Fascist mysticism’. They planted and hoed, raised rabbits and sheep, swept, dusted and polished and attended classes on such topics as chicken farming, beekeeping, ‘autarkic farming’, vegetable gardening, the care of silkworms, handicraft manufacturing, home economics, childcare and ‘colonial agriculture’. The following summer, their training complete, they were dispersed all over Italy, one being assigned to each PNF Provincial Federation to work as fully fledged ‘Massaie Rurali technical leaders’.
