Two Women Are Leading Italian Politics Right Now

Italian politics are at a fork in the road with women leading the way on either side: The country’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is leading the right, while Elly Schlein is leading the left.

Elly Schlein in 2020 helped her small party, Coraggiosa, prevent the alt-right from taking power in the Emilia-Romagna region, one of the country’s stalwart left-wing areas. Recently, Schlein pulled off an upset in her primary race, becoming the youngest person and first woman to lead Italy’s Democratic Party, which she previously left because of its centrist views.

Giorgia Meloni was appointed Italy’s first woman prime minister as a result of the nation’s September 2022 elections. Schlein faces a difficult road ahead, as the left was handily defeated by the far right in those elections.

Meloni and Schlein are polar opposites in almost every way, beginning with their respective lower- and upper-class upbringings. In terms of policy, Meloni is anti-LGBTQ rights and anti-immigrant and represents a party that has been linked to fascism. Schlein is bisexual and an outspoken feminist who has built her political philosophy around protecting marginalized communities.

At the same time, both women are facing similar obstacles in their political careers, namely making their respective ideologies appeal to the broader public. After her election, Meloni claimed she would “govern for everyone," per the BBC, but has still strategically appointed radical far-right politicians. Ben Munster noted in Foreign Policy that Meloni’s strategy seemed to be to put so-called moderates in high-profile government positions while relegating more radical picks to the fringes. Yet, Munster claims, this only offers the illusion of political balance since even her moderate picks are inherently radical. Some examples include finance minister Giancarlo Giorgetti, who supported the League party, which was centered around anti-immigrant policy and economic policies that would benefit the already prosperous north of Italy. Asked about how the League’s economic policy would affect the poorer south, Giorgetti is quoted in a 2010 piece from The New York Times saying, “it would help people who are used to swimming with a life jacket to swim without one.”

Schlein has been compared to the United States congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who made waves and drew the ire of her conservative colleagues for her outspoken belief in Democratic Socialism. A recent New York Times profile on Schlein noted that her grandfather was a Socialist, anti-fascist lawmaker and that she has Jewish and Ukrainian heritage. These identities, she claimed, have respectively made her a target of attacks and also given her a personal connection to international issues like Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. In addition to focusing on civil rights, Schlein advocates for a minimum wage and environmentally friendly policies. Like her American counterpart, and despite her success within her own party, Schlein has faced criticism that her policies are too far left to be politically viable, inspiring comparisons to Jeremy Corbyn and the U.K.’s struggling Labor party.

“Her position is a little too extreme,” one anonymous Democratic politician told The Guardian. “The point is, we have the Corbyn risk — many of us [within the party] think the same as does a good portion of the electorate.”

Ultimately, though, having women leaders represent each major political party is a big step forward in women’s representation in Italian politics. Out of 146 countries, Italy is 40th in gender equality in politics, according to the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Index 2022, and, at 31%, the representation of women in parliament recently decreased for the first time in 20 years.

“It will be a fight between these two leaders,” Mattia Diletti, a political professor at Rome’s Sapienza University told The Guardian. “Schlein is as assertive as Meloni and will be more assertive than before. She’s younger than Meloni and now stands with a clear political profile. But she must now be effective in challenging Meloni every day and everywhere in the country, as well as in taking control of her party and reconnecting it with a society in which many people just don’t trust politicians.”