From Nazi Germany to Trump's America: why strongmen rely on women at home

Soursw-https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/sep/21/fascism-women-homemaker-trad-wife


subtitle-Fascist regimes pushed narratives of domestic bliss, yet relied on women’s unpaid labor. In the US today, ‘womanosphere’ influencers promote the same fantasies


snip-"There’s been a reluctance to name this moment as fascism,” says cultural historian Tiffany Florvil, yet extreme authoritarian dynamics can be clearly seen in the American right today. (Indeed, Trump supporters can’t seem to stop calling him “Daddy”.)"


snip-"And significant backlash against gender equality is under way. The idea that women’s bodies are state resources for sustaining population appears to be re-emerging; the Trump administration is encouraging traditional roles by rolling back workplace equity, restricting reproductive rights and policing gender identity.

A woman’s “most glorious duty is to give children to her people and nation, children who can continue the line of generations and who guarantee the immortality of the nation”, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, told an audience of women in 1933. Racially selective population growth was core to the agenda of such nationalist, fascist regimes as Nazi Germany and Benito Mussolini’s Italy. The only path to honor for most women was birthing children, formalized through financial rewards and medals for prolific mothers."

Ssnip-"The administration’s policies suggest its goal is not only population growth but specifically more white births. By rolling back reproductive rights more drastically than at any point in the last 50 years, the Trump administration has set the stage for worsening maternal mortality – especially for Black women, who die in childbirth at nearly three-and-a-half times the rate of white women. It has also demonstrated hostility to people of color, tearing immigrant families apart, curtailing immigration and ordering an end to birthright citizenship."


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