ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the twentieth century the female Scouting movement in Italy had only a few members, because of some traditional preconceptions about character training, open-air activities, sport and affiliation to youth groups as elements having no bearing on girls’ education. During the Second World War and the years after it, Italian women entered a period of ‘female self-promotion’. The birth and renewal of Scouting groups became part of female efforts to achieve equality and self-fulfilment. Thus, although the Italian female Scouting movement was brought back to more traditional female models by the Church and moderate conformists, the new progressive stances could not be neglected. Actually, female Scouting education was tied to traditional women’s competences, but at the same time girl scouts acquired a new awareness of their rights and role in society, leading them at the end of the 1960s towards a ‘feminist-liberal’ trend. The aim of this study is to analyse how female involvement in the Scouting movement contributed to women’s self-fulfilment and to their cultural and political equality in twentieth-century Italy.
