Women before military justice. The trial of mobilized female civilians in the military court of Milan during the Second World War

This paper examines the trials of mobilized civilian women before the Territorial Military Court of Milan during the Second World War. It adopts a dual analytical perspective: first, the expansion of military criminal jurisdiction over civilians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly in connection with civilian mobilization; and second, the study of female criminality within the framework of gender studies. In cases concerning the abandonment of service by mobilized civilians, the Military Court of Milan did not display greater leniency toward women than toward men, diverging from a tendency noted in numerous studies according to which female defendants have often been judged more leniently than male defendants for comparable offences. However, when the abandonment of the workplace was linked to the abandonment of the marital home, the Military Court of Milan imposed harsher sentences or denied conditional suspension of the sentence. This judicial approach is consistent with a pattern documented in existing scholarship, showing that, while women have frequently benefited from more lenient treatment, those who transgress traditional gender roles have often been punished more severely than their male counterparts for the same offence.