Italy misses a #MeToo moment in Meloni’s breakup
Since Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first female prime minister, announced on social media last month that she was dumping her long-time boyfriend, Italians have barely stopped talking about it.
They are obsessed with leaking audio and video tapes showing Andrea Giambruno, a TV news presenter who is also the father of the prime minister’s young daughter, making lewd threesome and foursome jokes and apparent propositions to female colleagues.
Were the leaks politically motivated, as Ms. Meloni has insinuated? Had Ms. Meloni’s Dear Giambruno letter humanized her as an Italian everyday woman, or enhanced her tough, no-nonsense reputation? Was the breakup bad or good for her political career?
Far less attention has been paid to Mr Giambruno’s behaviour, which has been taken for granted by public debate as part of a culture of sexism and harassment common to women at work in Italy.
Mr Giambruno’s employer, Mediaset, owned by the family of the late Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who turned ‘bunga bunga’ into a boudoir name, gave him a week’s paid ‘self-suspension’ before bringing him back on the show – for now, off camera.
In the country that forgot #MeToo, feminists and critics of Ms. Meloni had hoped that the prime minister would use the occasion as a long overdue teaching moment, a rare opportunity to reckon with the country’s patriarchy and the legacy of traditionalism of Catholicism and the hedonism of Berlusconi. and the failure of successive governments to create social services that could help more women enter, stay and excel in the workforce.
Instead, Ms. Meloni has remained silent on these points.
That has been a disappointment to some in a country where women say they are still greeted with chauvinism by employers who see themselves – and are often treated as – powerful benefactors and patrons, treating them as objects of entertainment or flirtation.
Women in various professions in Italy say workplace harassment is the norm. A recent edition of The magazine L’Espresso documented widespread harassment in the advertising industry. A recent survey found that 85 percent of female journalists reported having been exposed to some form of harassment during their careers.
Tatiana Biagioni, president of the Italian Association of Employment Lawyers, which has been dealing with cases of discrimination and harassment in the workplace for decades, called the leaked recordings of Mr Giambruno’s behavior a “sad opportunity to talk about what normally happens happens in the workplace, because this is not an isolated case, it is an outright reality.”
“This is an underwater river that is making the world of work toxic in this country,” she said.
As it stands, Italy’s female labor force participation rate – just over 50 percent – is the lowest in the European Union or among the Group of Seven major economies. The lack of female participation is a drag on the economy and contributes to a declining birth rate. A study by the Bank of Italy found that if just 10 percent more women worked in Italy, the country’s GDP could grow by another 10 percent.
“The issue of women is the most important issue that needs to be addressed,” said Linda Laura Sabbadini, director of the Italian National Institute of Statistics. “Today the emergency in Italy is not the birth rate; the birth rate is the result of low female employment and low development of social welfare policies.”
Women are hardly visible at the top of large companies or major news organizations. Less than 25 percent of Italian professors are women. Less than 5 percent of Italian streets or squares are named after a woman, and half of them are saints or martyrs or the Virgin Mary. More common are outdated images of women, including: sexy tutorial on the public broadcaster for women about how to buy food.
Ms Meloni’s place as the first woman to rise to Italy’s highest position – and her very public break with a man who makes rude comments in the workplace – makes her responsibility to women inescapable, some feminists argue.
“She becomes Italy’s first feminist without really wanting to,” she said Riccarda Zezzaan author and businesswoman who specializes in women’s workplace issues.
Elly Schlein, the first woman to lead the Democratic opposition, said in a recent interview that it was Ms. Meloni’s job to answer such questions. “Having the first woman as prime minister of the country does not help all other women if she decides not to help them,” she said.
Ms Meloni herself has acknowledged that responsibility.
In her first major speech to Parliament, she spoke of how breaking “the glass ceiling” made her reflect on “the responsibility I have to all women who face difficulties in asserting their talent or, even more trivial, the right to have their daily sacrifices appreciated. .” She has called women “an untapped resource” to reduce dependence on migrant workers and has spoken about dealing with misogynistic comments in parliament. She said in a recent interview that she once ran for mayor of Rome while pregnant “because they told me I couldn’t.”
But she has also long made it clear that she is not a politician who wants to become a feminist icon.
The leader of the Brothers of Italy party, Ms. Meloni, is steeped in a far-right political culture that has elevated women as traditional mothers and opposed quotas to increase women’s representation in business and politics. She has rejected the feminine article ‘la’ before her title as president and emphasizes the traditional masculine article ‘il.”
Ms. Meloni has attributed her success in politics for decades to her personal hard work rather than to the progress made by organized women’s movements. “For example, I have never believed in women’s politics,” she said in an interview speech in March in the Women’s Hall of the Chamber of Deputies.
So it wasn’t surprising that when confronted with an issue that has despised women’s politics for decades, she called it a personal issue and became a mother.
“There is nothing in her statement that says, ‘I stand in solidarity with the women who are being harassed at work, and I do not condone that type of behavior,’” she said. Giulia Biasian Italian writer who focused on feminist issues.
Silvia Grillithe editor-in-chief of the women’s fashion magazine Graziawhich is dedicated to one recent issue on, and produced a short movie about the harassment of an Italian actress, said Mr Giambruno’s case reminded us how widespread such behavior is, and that it has as much to do with power as it does with sex.
“I don’t think there was even any intention to have an erotic relationship” with the woman Mr. Giambruno spoke to on the tape, she said. “It was solely and exclusively to put her in her place.”
Exactly why Italy has lagged behind in women’s advancement has been an area of inquiry for historians, scientists and economists. Some say it was the seat of the Catholic Church for 2,000 years.
“Catholic culture and philosophy are certainly one of the elements that hinder the independence of women in this country on an individual and collective level,” said Renato Fontana, professor of sociology at Sapienza University in Rome.
In the 1970s, Italian feminists made some progress as they leveraged the progress of women’s rights throughout the West. Divorce and abortion became legal. The pay became slightly more equal. In 1971, a law required the construction of public kindergartens, which research showed were critical to long-term academic success.
Yet in 1977, Italy had only a female labor force participation rate of 33 percent, and the country fell below the birth replacement rate. In the 1980s, as the country’s debt soared, politicians chose to cut social services that would benefit and employ women.
Instead, Italy relied on those women to care for the young and old in their own homes, a policy that suited far-right parties, like the one Ms. Meloni grew up in, that held deeply traditional views of the Italian family. .
“We started with the idea that women belong to the family,” says Ms. Zezza. “We never actually reached an agreement.”
In the 1980s, Berlusconi’s cultural power spread across Italy. He openly boasted about his sexual exploits. His media empire flooded the airwaves with scantily clad versions of his feminine ideal. Women, emboldened by the progress of the 1970s, felt they had lost decades.
“It was as if Berlusconi was making some sort of joke out of it,” he said Francesca Cavalloa writer on feminist issues.
Laura Ferrato, a spokeswoman for Mediaset, said it has thoroughly investigated the matter and spoken to “all the people involved in the off-air comments” and “anyone who had contact with him in the office, in the TV studios and on the radio. Mediaset building. At the end of the investigation, and after apologizing, Mr. Giambruno resumed his work.”
Mr. Giambruno, who has not made any public comments, did not return a request for comment.
The show that exposed Mr Giambruno’s bad behavior – a show famous for featuring two young women dancing on a newsreader’s desk – was also on the Berlusconi family network, she pointed out.
It was simply a paradox that “revealed the grotesque aspects that make our country difficult to understand.”
Gaia Pianigiani And Elisabetta Povoledo reporting contributed.