LETTER FROM ROME
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on November 22, 2022 in Rome. REMO CASILLI / Portal
Don’t call her “President”. For a month, Giorgia Meloni, the first woman to head the Italian executive since the founding of the republic in 1946, is “the president” of the council. On October 28, a circular from the Palazzo Chigi, the seat of the Italian head of government, even recommended calling Ms. Meloni the term “Mr. President of the Council”.
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If the text was changed quickly after being the subject of criticism and ridicule, the use of the Italian masculine article “il” is preferred to the feminine “la”, before the immutable function of the Italian “presidente”, s is imposed in official communications as well in the media. Sought by a far-right leader and known for her conservative positions on societal affairs, he highlighted from the start of her tenure Ms Meloni, 45,’s ambivalent position on the issue of women’s inclusion within an Italian political class largely dominated by graying male figures.
On October 25, during her very powerful investiture speech before the Chamber of Deputies, Ms. Meloni nonetheless paid overwhelming tribute to the women who had individually made their way into the country’s political, scientific, cultural or sporting history. “They built the ladder that allows me to break through the glass ceiling today,” Ms. Meloni said. Then, calling them by their first names, she evoked the memory of figures who formed a national and female chain, from the 19th-century patriot campaigner for Italian independence Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso to the astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti . whom the chief executive put himself in a position to pursue.
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An only illegitimate daughter
Such is the case with the vision of the cause of women carried by Giorgia Meloni. She is always ready to celebrate famous or anonymous heroines, like her own mother, single and humble. But it refuses any structural consideration of gender inequalities. In her autobiography Io sono Giorgia, which was a hit when it was published in Italy in May 2021, Ms. Meloni tells of her political rise in an epic tale laced with references to the bed book of far-right activists of his generation. Lord of the Rings.
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She eventually develops a vision of feminism that may seem contradictory, affirming that she has never felt discriminated against while embracing the maxim of Ottawa Mayor Charlotte Whitton in the 1950s: “Women must do things do twice as well as men to get noticed half as well as they do. Fortunately, it’s not difficult. In addition, Ms. Meloni’s commitment to the “traditional family”, particularly reflected in a personal opposition to abortion, which she refuses to translate into restrictive public policies, stands in contrast to her own way of life. With a single illegitimate daughter by the age of 39, her profile bears no resemblance to the archetype of the traditional Catholic mother.
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