The Most Powerful Woman in the European Union Is Anti-Woman

Barbie Latza Nadeau
Wed, September 28, 2022 

Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters

The morning that more than 25 percent of Italian voters decided they wanted a woman to lead them, that woman—Giorgia Meloni—posted a video on her social media holding two melons more or less in front of her breasts with a wink and a smirk.

That the 45-year-old Roman native, whose last name in Italian indeed means “melons,” chose to start election day with that photo was nowhere near the most controversial part of her campaign. Nor is the fact that her party has shortened the timeframe for legal abortion—which she refers to as a tragedy—from nine weeks to seven weeks in the Italian regions they govern. Or that she seeks to re-examine the legality of same-sex unions and same-sex adoption.

It could be argued that her biggest affront is joining a coalition with Silvio Berlusconi, who has singlehandedly done more to hurt any hope of equality and empowerment in Italy than any other person. As prime minister, he once pleaded with foreign firms to invest in Italy because the country had such “beautiful secretaries.”


As the head of the Mediaset empire, his television programming has for years been akin to soft porn, creating the “velina” or showgirl, which more than half of young girls in Italian public schools aspire to become, according to a recent poll. He has been convicted of paying an underage exotic dancer for sex, and is infamous for his bunga bunga parties where pole dancers writhed on his cronies.

That Italy ranks 27th out of 27 countries in the European Union for gender parity for the World Economic Forum despite having among the most educated women in Europe is telling and largely blamed on Berlusconi’s media, which normalized sexploitation for the last 40 years.

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But also telling is the high rate of domestic violence and femicide—the latest figures show one woman is killed by a man she thought loved her every three days.

Meloni is often referred to as a single mother, which she is, and which makes no difference to her political acumen. But that she has also anchored her campaign on the “traditional family” has raised eyebrows. Her 6-year-old daughter’s father, who she is romantically involved with, is a Mediaset journalist who lives in Milan. When asked once how she can pitch for a traditional family when her own is not, she simply said, “we are a man and a woman.”

Yet, Meloni has been embraced. Hillary Clinton, perhaps unaware of her domestic agenda, was among the first to tweet support, writing. “The election of the first woman prime minister in a country always represents a break with the past, and that is certainly a good thing.”

But so was Marine Le Pen, the French far-right politician whose own political feelings about gender equality lack a certain modernity.

Meloni, who started her political career in the neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement party, which was dissolved when it became illegal to embrace the ideals of Benito Mussolini, recently tweeted an anti-immigration video of an African migrant allegedly raping a Ukrainian refugee on a street.

That she did not think that posting a video that clearly showed the victim’s face was in breech of a certain ethical concern for privacy is important to note. Twitter removed the tone-deaf tweet and Meloni unapologetically said she was only doing it to show Italy needed to beef up security. The victim spoke out against Meloni, saying that being exposed made her “desperate” and that the video only added to her misery.

Italy is often referred to as a land that feminism forgot, and Meloni as the first female prime minister may well be the most fitting. “Being a woman doesn’t automatically mean being feminist,” Italian journalist Giulia Siviero told openDemocracy recently. “Arguing that a woman—any woman—winning [an election] is a conquest for all women and for feminism is very sexist to me, because it puts the sex before the person and her beliefs or policies.”

A childhood friend of Meloni, who doesn’t want to be named, told The Daily Beast that the reason she posted the melon video was an inside joke, and that after having spent years ridiculed for her last name, it was somewhat of a “last laugh” against those who bullied her. And Meloni was criticized in the past for promoting women to the upper echelons of her Brothers of Italy party she founded. So much so that several men changed party alliances for discrimination.



Italy is an unarguably patriarchal society in which 40 percent of women with children do not work outside the home, and, as such, a female leader will undoubtedly be judged differently than a male. Only time will tell if she does better or keeps the status quo.

Italy Turns Right as Coalition Headed by Giorgia Meloni Wins National Vote; How Will It Affect Media?

Nick Vivarelli
Mon, September 26, 2022 


Italy on Monday took a sharp turn towards the right as Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party, which has neo-fascist roots, emerged as big winners in the country’s national elections.

Final results on Monday showed Meloni and her party winning roughly 26% of the vote and the center-right coalition she leads scoring 44% of parliamentary preferences. Within that coalition Matteo Salvini’s anti-immigrant League won nearly 9% and former prime minister and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia took 8%. A much smaller member of the coalition, called the Moderates, took less than 1%.

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Meloni’s closest challenger, with some 19.3% of the vote, is the center-left Democratic Party headed by Enrico Letta, who has announced his resignation. Italy’s anti-establishment 5-Star Movement — which had won the vote in Italy’s 2018 parliamentary elections — saw its support halved to some 15% this time around.

Meloni, who is 45, is now poised to become Italy’s first female prime minister, leading the country’s most right-wing government since World War II.

She scored victory while running on anti-immigration policies, as well as plans to limit LGBTQ rights and abortions, though Meloni has insisted throughout the campaign that she does not intend to roll back Italian legislation introduced in 1978 that made abortion legal.

For the country’s film and TV industries, the most immediate symbolic significance of this election is that Berlusconi — who served as Italy’s prime minister three times during the 1990s and 2000s — will be back in parliament after being kicked out in November 2013 following a tax fraud conviction.

That conviction had barred the media-mogul-turned-politician, who controls Italy’s top commercial broadcaster Mediaset, from running in a general election for six years.

Though Berlusconi still has a pending trial for allegedly paying guests to lie about his “bunga bunga” sex parties while he was prime minister — charges that he denies — the scandal-prone billionaire, who turns 86 on Thursday, will now return to Italy’s parliament after being re-elected with more than 50% of the votes in the northern constituency of Monza.

This time around, Berlusconi will be joined in parliament by his latest girlfriend, Marta Fascina, 32, who won a seat in Sicily. Fascina is set to take up a seat in the lower Chamber of Deputies, while Berlusconi was elected to the upper house, the Senate.

While Italy’s new center-right coalition is the elections’ winner, the formation of the country’s new government, probably headed by Meloni, will take several weeks of intense political horse-trading to be voted in place, with outgoing premier Mario Draghi remaining until then in a caretaker role. The outcome of the government’s makeup — specifically who will head the country’s culture and economic development ministries — will help shed light on how the country’s rightward shift will impact the country’s film and TV sectors.

What’s clear even at this stage is that Meloni, though she has been known to rail against the European Union, is not expected to take an anti-EU stance as prime minister.

Italy is among the biggest beneficiaries of the EU’s post-pandemic recovery fund and Berlusconi has said that his inclusion in the center-right bloc coalition will guarantee that Italy stays firmly anchored in the EU.

“There are no big surprises. I expect a relatively small impact considering that the League, the party with the least pro-European stance, seems to have come out weak,” Giuseppe Sersale, an Italian fund manager and market analyst, told Reuters.

Speaking to Variety ahead of the vote, Cinecittà studios CEO Nicola Maccanico said the electoral outcome was not likely to impact Italy’s generous 40% tax rebate for film and TV production — which was raised from 30% during the pandemic — and is the Italian film and TV industry’s key driver and the magnet attracting an increasing number of international productions to the country.

The vote is likely to prompt a management change at state broadcaster RAI, but it’s too early to say what types of new policies could be implemented at the mammoth broadcaster, which is expected to remain an important financing source for the country’s film and TV production sector.