Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first female prime minister, has been named “Man of the Year” by a right-wing newspaper. The article was not well received by Italian women’s rights activists, who accused Meloni of not doing enough to protect women from violence.
The article was published in Libero newspaper and was written by the paper’s Rome bureau chief, Mario Ceci, who previously headed Meloni’s public relations team.
The article, titled “Man of the Year,” said that Giorgia Meloni had won the “war of the sexes” in Italy and “not only smashed the glass ceiling, but also eliminated it.”
“In a society of weak ideas, we have allowed strong ideas,” Ceci wrote in the article.
The article said, “In the midst of excessive diversity, we reversed the genders. In times of war, we selected those who showed they knew how to fight.”
“Libero Giorgia Meloni is ‘Man of the Year’. Above all, she won the war between the sexes, changed thinking, diversity, overcame male arrogance and female defeatism, and won the war between the sexes. “She didn’t just shatter the glass ceiling, she melted it,” the article further stated.
The article was poorly received by Italy’s opposition parties, who accused Meloni of “abandoning Italian women”.
“Today, right-wing newspapers are telling us that politics and power belong to men,” said Ellie Schlein, secretary of the center-left Democratic Party.
“I don’t think my aspiration as a politician is to be ‘man of the year.’ Rather, I think this is a surrender,” Schlein was quoted as saying by the Telegraph.
Another MP, Elisabetta Piccolotti, called on Mr Meloni to reject the article, describing it as an “affirmation of male supremacy”.
“At this point, Prime Minister, are you a woman, a man, or non-binary?” Piccolotti wrote on Facebook.
But Gennaro Sangiuliano, Meloni’s culture minister and former deputy director of Libero, told reporters that the title of “man of the year” was well deserved.
Meloni has not yet commented on Libero’s article.