CULTURE | ADVOCACY & POLICY | EUROPE | LGBTQ+
Motherhood and Feminism in Giorgia Meloni's Italy
WORDS BY KALY DE OLIVEIRA CERQUEIRA | KALY@THEIWI.ORG | 28 MAY 2024
“A great battle for somebody who is defending humankind and the rights of people is also to defend families, is also to defend nations, is also to defend identity, is also to defend God and all the things that have built our civilisation.”
- Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy
Giorgia Meloni, the first female prime minister of Italy and leader of Fratelli D’Italia, places womanhood at the heart of her political identity. The above quotation is a snippet from her speech to the Budapest demographic summit, as she references the online ridicule of her now infamous ‘I am a mother’ speech. The battle Meloni is supposedly waging is not only against online haters, but the problem of declining fertility rates in Italy, which is one of the lowest in Europe. The larger war she is aiming to win, however, is a nationalist fight against social progression and cultural inclusion, hidden within a false interest in women and families.
Reading through the Fratelli D’Italia’s manifesto, I was initially surprised at the policies which seemingly promoted female equality. In Italy, less than half of working-age Italian women are employed, and the country ranks lower than the EU as a whole on the 2023 Gender Equality Index. In their original election manifesto, Meloni’s party emphasised the importance of ending the gender pay gap and eliminating the pink tax, stressing the need to battle cultural stereotypes which put ‘women in a condition of subordination’. In one her latest 2024 pledges, published in February, she has introduced a tax exemption for working mothers on permanent contracts with at least 2 children, which begins to roll out her many election promises to help both working men and women with childcare.
However, the vital condition of equality lies in a focus around family life. The latest document on the party website has two pink banners announcing upcoming policies and recent achievements under the ‘family package’, implicitly linking family to notions of traditional femininity. Meloni is also president of the European Conservative and Reformists Party (ECR), which is predicted by Politico to win between 75-80 seats in the June 2024 EU election according to current trends. On this party’s website, Meloni seems unafraid to align herself with more abashedly traditional gendered rhetoric than she does in her home policies. Under their ‘family and life’ section, they set out their aim to reinstate the ‘biological and social reality’ for both men and women. Although they do acknowledge that fatherhood is important to men, they focus specifically on the threat ‘gender ideology’ has on women, stating ‘only [motherhood] gives women true dignity’.
When Meloni stated ‘I am Giorgia. I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian’, she was not identifying different parts of her own identity, but creating a super-identity to enforce on all women through her political power. In Meloni’s Italy, to be a woman is to be a mother, and the duty of motherhood is ensuring the continuation of a Christian, Italian nationhood through future generations. Immigrant or LGBTQ+ families are not part of this political imagination. They are instead treated as ideological threats to this unified identity.
This obsession with family, and the woman’s role in maintaining and producing it, which hides behind welfare provisions for women and their children is not new. Throughout researching Meloni’s rhetoric around gender, I was reminded of Kevin Passmore’s description of mid 20th century fascism and its relationship with women:
‘Fascist movements demanded, and regimes implemented, a range of welfare provisions, many of which seemed to fulfill long-standing desires of the women’s movement (family allowances, marriage loans, improved health care at work, and so on). These measures weren’t meant to extend the range of choices open to women. They served […] the supposed needs of the nation and race.’
Although Passmore would be hesitant to call modern right wing movements fascist, preferring the term ‘national populism’, it is a fact that Meloni’s Fratelli D’Italia has its historical roots in neo-fascist parties founded by followers of Benito Mussolini. Even though the party has now made efforts to move away from this, they seem to pay homage to their heritage in their obsession with baby-makers (but total disregard for women). Meloni’s own Minister for Equal Opportunities, Eugenia Roccella has publicly spoken out against abortion as a right, whilst the ECR instead continually defends the right to life ‘from conception’. In her original manifesto, Meloni promised not to touch the 1978 law which originally legalised abortion in Italy, but the rhetoric which she actively enables places this promise on shaky foundations.
Even after the false rhetoric of caring for women is stripped away, the remaining passion for protecting family life rings false in the face of the government’s actions. Under Meloni’s rule, the Ministry of the Interior has put in measures that only recognises biological parents, and a national ban has now been placed on those who go abroad to access the surrogacy service. Rainbow families are especially affected by this measure, beginning a legal manifestation of Meloni’s personal belief that LGBT+ couples should not be allowed to have children. It seems that increasing birthrates is no longer vital if the children born are raised outside of ‘acceptable’ hetero-normative family dynamics. Rainbow Europe has noted the rise in lesbophobia attacks in 2022, as well as the increase in general homophobic hate speech and violence in the country. It seems that Meloni only wants to defend and protect a very specific type of woman and family.
Even the mothers who Meloni has promised to help with all her welfare provisions have been left unprotected. Meloni’s cutting of the citizen’s income, which benefits families and individuals with low income, will disproportionately affect women, who make up 56% of recipients. Furthermore, her promises of building nurseries to benefit working women has not been fully realised in the alloted time, forcing her to negotiate with the EU for more funding to achieve this end.
Lastly, one of the most sinister aspects of Meloni’s motherhood ideology, is her defense of ‘nation’ and ‘civilisation’. In her election pledges, a hardline against illegal migration and asylum processes was listed alongside desires to return Italian emigrants to Italy, suggesting the growing migrant population is a threat to Italian identity. Illegal immigration is related to the degradation of historic town centres, with a whole other list of pledges promising to create a ‘new Italian imagination’ in schools and the wider nation, through historical reenactments and the ‘valorisation of Rome as the capital of Christianity.’
But what does this have to do with Meloni’s stance on women and motherhood? When Meloni stated ‘I am Giorgia. I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian’, she was not identifying different parts of her own identity, but creating a super-identity to enforce on all women through her political power. In Meloni’s Italy, to be a woman is to be a mother, and the duty of motherhood is ensuring the continuation of a Christian, Italian nationhood through future generations. Immigrant or LGBTQ+ families are not part of this political imagination. They are instead treated as ideological threats to this unified identity.
With Meloni cleverly making alliances with both moderate conservative and extreme right-wing leaders in the EU, she has become a useful ally for other politically powerful people like European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. This, and a home approval rating of 40% according to Statista’s recent polls, means Giorgia Meloni is unlikely to disappear into the background anytime soon. Therefore, it is vital to remain diligent in revealing the hypocrisy in her policies, and view pro-woman pledges which grow out of traditionalist foundations critically. Because ultimately, policies which only protect women when they are providing more citizens for the nation, do not have the interest of women at heart.
https://www.euronews.com/2023/10/21/giorgia-melonis-scorecard-what-has-the-italian-pm-achieved-during-her-first-year-in-govern
https://www.rainbow-europe.org/#8640/0/0
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https://www.programmafdi2022.it/