What lies behind the new right for Italian MEPs to breastfeed in the hemicycle

Until now, they had to leave the hemicycle, take a corridor, then lock themselves in an adjacent room reserved for breastfeeding.

A time now over.

Indeed, Italian MPs can now breastfeed inside Parliament, the committee responsible for the House's rules of procedure announced on 15th November last.

A new fundamental measure for the feminist cause, committed to enabling women to reconcile maternity and professional life.

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At the origin of this bill, Gilda Sportiello, a member of the left movement "5 stars", currently pregnant and victim in turn of this sexist discrimination.

“No woman should be forced to make a choice between breastfeeding and working.

Unfortunately, today and because of this, women no longer breastfeed between the 3rd and 6th month of the baby”, she defended, according to comments relayed

.

As such, breastfeeding becomes authorized in the Italian hemicycle until the child's first birthday.

In video, an ad with topless women shows the difficulties of breastfeeding

Far-right feminism

A victory, therefore, which seems to delight all political camps.

Indeed, this measure was recovered and applauded by the one who was elected Prime Minister of Italy on September 25, 2022, Giorgia Meloni.

In a statement published last week, the president of the far-right party "Brothers of Italy" was indeed enthusiastic about this new regulation, explaining that it was an "important sign of the attention to motherhood, childhood and family and a step forward on the path to work-life balance”.

But if the reform thus reconciles the left and the extreme right on the front, it is not erected under the same convictions.

Read alsoGiorgia Meloni, the quadra who conquered Italy with her triptych "God, fatherland, family"

Because Giorgia Meloni has made her condition as a woman and a mother the basis of her electoral campaign, supporting anti-progressive ideas in a more credible way.

During a meeting in the fall of 2019, she proclaimed: "I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian and you will not take that away from me!".

Thus, the idea of ​​breastfeeding in all circumstances is part of the continuity of his discourse.

And if some feminists see in its authorization a certain emancipation, some wonder if, in the long term, it will not participate in creating a new form of injunction, in a country where the conservative parties walk in the lead.

Note that Giorgia Meloni had herself proposed this measure in 2019.

Read alsoGiorgia Meloni, the quadra who conquered Italy with her triptych "God, fatherland, family"

Moreover, the Prime Minister of Italy gives the perfect example of this vision of the “mother at all costs”.

Very involved in her role, she also drew the ire of her detractors after her return from the G20 in Bali, which took place on November 15 and 16, by deciding to take her 6-year-old daughter with her.

Faced with the controversy, the latter hastened to respond on Facebook: “The question I have to ask the hosts of this passionate debate is the following: do you think that the way my daughter should grow up concerns you?

Because here's the news: it's not.

I have the right to mother as I see fit and I have the right to do everything I can for this nation without depriving it of a mother”.

MEP Licia Ronzulli, leader of the Forza Italia group (right-wing movement), also welcomed the news.

In 2013, she made headlines by going to a session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where breastfeeding is allowed, with her daughter Vittoria in her arms.

“On the reconciliation between work and family, the institutions, called upon to legislate in this direction, must set an example”, she then tweeted … And if that fed more discrimination?