in brief: women play big role in new italian government
Photo by Gregorio Borgia/AP
Seven women have been appointed to the 22-member cabinet of Italy’s new left-right coalition government.
Italian Prime Minister, Enrico Letta, whose government was sworn in a week ago, appointed women to the high profile positions at the head of the foreign and justice ministries. Female ministers now also head the ministries of health, agriculture, integration, and sport, youth and equal opportunity.
Female cabinet ministers are not new in Italian politics, but critics argue that in the past they have often been selected for reasons other than their aptitude for the job and that their appointments have been little more than token gestures of gender equality.
Ex-Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who is currently the defendant in four trials, caused a sensation when he appointed a former topless model, Mara Carfagna, to his cabinet in 2008. The previous year, she was at the centre of a very public feud between Berlusconi and his wife when he said that if he weren’t already married, he would marry Carfagna immediately.
The inclusion of seven women in the new Italian cabinet appears to be a genuine attempt to combat the latent sexism that many see as a mark of Italian and European politics.
Catherine Fieschi, writing for The Guardian, argues that the inclusion of women in governments across Europe, even where they possess little power, is helping to entrench the public expectation that women play an important role in governance.
She points to the examples of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark, where women hold key government positions. This is at least in part due, she contends, to these countries’ early implementation of gender quotas, which have helped shape public opinion as well as the political landscape.
Two of the female cabinet appointments are noteworthy for another reason. The new cabinet minister for sport, youth and equal opportunity, Josefa Idem, was born in Germany, whilst the minister for integration, Cécile Kyenge, was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and is Italy’s first black cabinet minister.
Kyenge was the target of racist slurs upon her appointment, including from members of Italy’s fourth largest political party, the anti-immigration Northern League.
By Toby Newton
