The Gioventù Italiana del Littorio (GIL) was the most important youth organization of the Fascist regime between 1937 and 1943. Like other Fascist institutions, it devoted huge resources to sport, which represented one of the main activities practiced by its members.

Sport within the GIL, however, was not inclusive: several categories of people were excluded or forced to practice sports separately.

First of all, women were allowed to engage in sporting activities only to a limited extent and always separately from men. In line with the regime's policies, the GIL believed that women should be educated to become “spose e madri esemplari” (exemplary wives and mothers) and, despite the openings toward female mobilization that occurred in the second half of the 1930s, it continued to impose strict limits on the sporting activities of female members.

From 1938, moreover, the GIL excluded members of Jewish origin from sport, as from all other activities.

Finally, following the general Fascist policy toward people with disabilities, the organization did not allow members considered physically unfit to practice sports. Only during the Second World War, some limited forms of corrective gymnastics were introduced for them.

In essence, within the GIL – as in the broader Fascist policy – sport was not a tool for inclusion, but for exclusion.

My paper aims to analyze the politicies of the GIL toward these “discriminated” categories and the limits within which they managed to engage in sporting activities.

Main sources of the paper will be documents from the Archivio Centrale dello Stato, the Archivio Storico del CONI, and contemporary press. The paper is part of a broader research, currently in progress, on the history and activities of the Gioventù Italiana del Littorio.