[2] In the postwar period, she was one of the first women along with Egon Schaden to receive a doctoral degree in anthropology in Brazil.
[3] Born in the Bom Retiro neighborhood, in São Paulo, Brazil, on 15 November 1913, Gioconda Mussolini was the third of seven daughters of Italian immigrant Umberto Mussolini, who arrived in Brazil from Veneto in 1888, and his Brazilian wife Adalgisa Vieiga.
[4] She attended primary school at Regente Feijó and São Paulo between 1922 and 1926.
In 1935, she was admitted at the newly created school of philosophy, sciences and letters at the University of São Paulo which offered improvement course in social sciences for the primary school teachers.
Between 1941 and 1945, she also studied for a master's degree in anthropology at the school of sociology and politics, University of São Paulo under the guidance of Herbert Baldus, a German anthropologist.