The Guardian is upset that Giorgia Meloni, very likely set to become Italy’s first woman prime minister, is opposed to gender quotas and “sexualised” herself during the election.
In an article harping on the fact that the national conservative leader “posted [a] sexualised clip of herself during [the] election campaign, favours curbs on abortion and is against ‘pink quotas’” by Rome correspondent Angela Giuffrida, the British newspaper appeared irate that she believed “roles should be achieved through merit, not gender”.
The “sexualised” video — a joke social media post uploaded after electioneering was officially closed of a fully-clothed Meloni holding two melons in front of her chest and saying “September 25th [election day], I’ve said everything” — was “a further indication that Meloni would not be carrying the torch for feminists as prime minister” for “those who found the clip distasteful”, the leftist news outlet suggested.
Giuffrida appears to have gone so far as to contact Meloni’s team for a statement on the video, and was “told [that] the melons were simply a play on the surname Meloni” — which means melons — and dismissed any suggestion that she was “a woman against women” as “distasteful” and “outside of reality”.
The Guardian did concede that Meloni, who they branded “far right” throughout, becoming prime minister — assuming no unexpected twists in the formation of the next government — marks a genuine breakthrough, and even quoted women within the left-establishment Democratic Party (PD) who were critical of its somewhat fraudulent pose as a champion of women.
“The really big problem with the left is that they only put women in ‘second level’ positions rather than putting us in leadership roles that would really give us power,” said Luisa Rizzitelli, of her own experience being invited to stand for the Democrats — in a no-hope constituency she was all but guaranteed to lose.
Monica Cirinnà, another prominent PD activist, said she had a similar experience, suggesting that women who do not toe the line in terms of how they express themselves “irritate” the party’s male leadership.
Meanwhile, Lavinia Mennuni, a newly-elected senator for Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, told the newspaper that in addition to likely having furnished Italy with its first woman prime minister, it also boasts “a large number of women who were elected to parliament”
Mennuni stressed, however, that “it is not about whether Meloni is a woman or not – she is simply a very good leader, someone who is determined and coherent. We need to stop attributing feminist labels to everything.”