Are Italian women’s rights and LGBT+ people under attack from the radical right Meloni government?

On 22 October 2022, Italy's most right-wing government since 1946 took office in Rome. The results of the general election held on 25th of September 2022 registered the clear victory of Giorgia Meloni as leader of the right-wing coalition and as leader of the most voted Italian party. The radical right party Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FdI) won 26 percent of the vote while its coalition partners of Lega and Forza Italia won 8.8 and 8.1, respectively. The resulting government composition was manly under control of FdI. The choice to nominate well known figures of the Italian ultra-catholic conservative movement (among which Eugenia Roccella as Ministry of Family, birth rate and equal opportunities; Giuseppe Valditara as Minister of Education and merit; and Alfredo Mantovano as undersecretary to the presidency of the council) has raised concerns among feminists, LGBTQ+ activists and scholars. Over the year, a series of government decisions confirmed the political agenda of the two radical rights parties in power more and more evidently acting as self- proclaimed defenders of the (traditional, heterosexual and white) Italian family. I recall - among others - the attacks against the rights of LGBT+ parenting, the opposition to the surrogacy conceived as an universal crime, the attention on the key role of women as (working) mothers in supporting the rise of the Italia birth rate, the hostility to introducing sexual education at school and protecting the exclusive role of the parents in child education. All in all, while anti-feminist groups (among which the anti-choice catholic association of Pro Vita & Famiglia) praised and supported Meloni government, the oppositions of feminist and LGBT+ organizations were so far ineffective due to the fragmentation of the movement. To conclude, the aim of the paper is to analyze the impact of Giorgia Meloni government on women's rights and gender equality norms and to assess the capacity of feminist and LGBT+ associations in organizing an effective response.