Fascist Unionization and the Professionalization of Midwives in Italy: A Sicilian Case Study

Abstract

In the 19th century, Italian midwives (then called levatrice) began to organize in an attempt to resist encroachments being made on their practice by obstetricians. Licensed midwives formed professional societies, organized national congresses, and published journals. By the fascist period (1922–43), with the foundation of the first national state‐sanctioned union and the institution of an obligatory professional register (Albo), midwifery achieved the status of a recognized profession. The professionalizing practices of midwives, however, combined with a new state interest in their activities and a broader role for the medical profession in defining the proper place of midwives, held Italian midwifery to a course that, in the end, led to its institution as a secondary and subordinate profession within the Italian medical hierarchy. This article focuses on very specific material from Sicily to see, in detail, the workings of this process.