The likely rise of Giorgia Meloni to the post of Italy’s prime minister extends the list of important European economies led by women, although it does not reverse the regional balance of power in terms of gender. At least 13 nations on the continent have women as heads of state or government.
The originality of the Italian ultra-rightist, however, like the election of Liz Truss in the United Kingdom 20 days earlier, took place without the campaign or her figure claiming centrally on the political gender agenda.
Leader of an acronym with roots in fascism, Meloni stressed the fact that she is a woman and mother throughout the campaign and spoke about her difficulties in reaching high positions, but she dispenses with being called a feminist and criticizes quotas for women — if she managed to, why can’t others, after all, also?
The Italian woman has already said in interviews that she does not intend to interfere with the right to legal abortion, but to emphasize policies to prevent the voluntary interruption of pregnancy, which is seen by activists as a way to dissuade women from the procedure.
At the same time, it defends flags, such as the concept of the traditional family, far from the demands embraced by feminist movements in recent decades. As a candidate, she became the target of a kind of “She, no” movement, led by women.
With 99.9% of the polls counted, the far-right coalition that the Italian leads won 43.79% of the votes – which should revert to 235 of the 400 seats in the Chamber. In second place, the center-left ticket, led by the Democratic Party, appears with 26.13% (80 seats).
Truss, Boris Johnson’s successor in leading the British Conservatives, has already defined herself as a feminist in BBC interview three years ago —at the time, she was the Minister for Women and Equality. “A feminist Destiny’s Child,” she said, alluding to the 1990s American musical group that included, among others, Beyoncé.
But he soon added: “The Labor Party likes to treat women as victims; I believe women should be independent.” When she ran the equality portfolio while she was British chancellor, Truss was even accused of marginalizing the equality agenda by Parliament’s women’s committee.
“European politics, despite having a much greater participation of women, remains an arena fundamentally dominated by men; a conservative and patriarchal field”, says Carolina Pavese, PhD in international relations at the London School of Economics.
Figures such as Truss, Meloni and even Marine Le Pen, who contested the second round in France against Emmanuel Macron, assesses, reinforce the discussion on the link between female political representation and a structural change in society.
“Women who manage to rise to top positions often don’t question the patriarchal and conservative structure of politics — on the contrary, they flirt with that structure.”
Beatriz Rodriguez Sanchez, PhD in Political Science from USP, considers that it is not just the numerical dimension of the representation of women that is important. “There is a question of justice and democracy, as women represent on average half of the population of countries. But the dimension of the content represented is also very important.”
In this sense, feminist movements question whether the election of a woman can mean collective advances that go beyond the symbolic — even if it is not accompanied by the defense of deeper changes that allow breaking with obstacles to female participation.
“From an intersectional perspective, for example, a feminist platform advocates policies that are not just for a few women, but that promote social justice in terms of race, class, gender and sexuality,” says Sanchez.
The regional context also matters, says Pavese, who teaches at ESPM. “In British society, it is unacceptable to speak directly and against these guidelines. [de gênero]; In the Italian context, of a traditionally very conservative society, there is room for a declared conservative discourse against minorities.”
When it comes to the domestic context, Truss and Meloni add to a list that includes figures such as Mette Frederiksen, Sanna Marin and Katrín Jakobsdóttir, prime ministers of Denmark, Finland and Iceland, respectively — Nordic nations where there is a recognized welfare state. forged, among other things, in gender equality. This, points out Pavese, irrigates the scenario for the rise of women.
A month ago, Finnish Marin found herself at the center of criticism, much of it misogynistic, after photos of her at parties were leaked. The episode flirts with cases of political gender violence, says Sanchez. And figures like Truss and Meloni, obviously, are not excluded from the possibility of being targets of this practice. “These are criticisms that either have to do with the personal attribute, such as being outside of what is considered a standard, or of sexual conduct; by far they are not the same that men suffer.”
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