No such thing as female solidarity, claims Italian PM Giorgia Meloni

Women have no sense of solidarity with each other, preferring to compete instead of teaming up, and men are to blame, Giorgia Meloni says.

Italy's Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni: ‘I have always believed there is no solidarity between women – they are far less loyal than they say.’ Picture: AFP

Women have no sense of solidarity with each other, preferring to compete instead of teaming up, and men are to blame, Giorgia Meloni has said.

However, the Italian Prime Minister argued that when women have children, they become keenly supportive of other mothers “like veterans at the front”.

Ms Meloni, 47, made the claims during a podcast interview she gave to coincide with Mother’s Day. She discussed her role as a parent since she was elected as Italy’s first female prime minister in 2022.

Ms Meloni’s electoral win was followed by the Democratic Party, Italy’s centre-left opposition, naming Elly Schlein as its first female leader in 2023.

But despite the sea change in Italy’s traditionally male-dominated political arena, Ms Meloni said she was not seeing too many women determined to give each other a helping hand.

“I have always believed there is no solidarity between women – they are far less loyal than they say,” she told Diletta Leotta, presenter of the podcast.

“It’s as if – how can I say – they are victims of a narrative that suggests they will never be good enough to compete with men, and that leads them naturally to compete among themselves,” Ms Meloni added.

“But among mothers it’s something else – they are loyal like veterans at the front, like people who have fought a war together.”

She said the mothers of her daughters’ school friends regularly offered to take her to class parties when she was still stuck in the office.

The offers were posted on the parents’ WhatsApp group, Ms Meloni said, adding that she was involved in the group. “I comment, give my opinions, vote when there is a vote, participate when I can,” she said.

Last year Ms Meloni split from Andrea Giambruno, a TV presenter who is the father of her daughter, after a recording of him proposing threesomes to female colleagues went public.

She has taken her daughter, Ginevra, on work trips with her – flying her to a G20 meeting in Bali in 2022.

Since then, however, she has admitted she had only been able to pick her up from school three or four times.

Ms Meloni said she would not take her daughter to next month’s G7 meeting, which Italy is hosting in Puglia, and has recently discovered it clashes with a dance performance at Ginevra’s school.

“You know when they scheduled it? The first day of the G7, the one thing in a year I cannot change,” she said.

Ms Meloni quoted Seneca, the Roman Stoic philosopher, saying: “The most surprising thing is that you wouldn’t let anyone steal your property, but you consistently let people steal your time, which is infinitely more valuable.”

That, she said, “is something I understood when I became a mother”.

Ms Meloni has made much of her status as a mother, famously yelling at a campaign rally: “I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Christian.”

She has campaigned against same-sex parenting, pushing for a total ban on gay couples having children through surrogacy. “It should no longer be scandalous to say we are all born of a man and a woman, it should no longer be a taboo to say births are not for sale, the uterus is not for rent,” she said last year.

Ms Meloni also called for a higher birthrate among heterosexual couples, echoing Pope Francis.

Despite shaking up Italian politics she opposes female quotas and gave only six posts to women in her 24-strong cabinet.

Her adoption of the masculine form of her title, calling herself “il” rather than “la” presidente del consiglio, prompted accusations she had set back the battle for equal rights in Italy.

THE TIMES