by Veronica Frigeni
Eugenia Maria Roccella was appointed Minister for Family, Natality and Equal Opportunities in the government headed by Giorgia Meloni on October 22, 2022. The article engages Roccella’s idiosyncratic post-feminism, examining its conservative, populist and maternalist stance and assessing how it positions itself in relation to existing paradigms of sexual difference and queer feminism. In particular, reading the Minister’s theoretical and literary texts alongside her parliamentary speeches and interviews, the article interrogates Roccella’s discursive construction of motherhood from a pro-life, pro-family and anti-gender perspective. Through the investigation of the interconnection between notions of motherhood, natality, family and equal opportunities, that Roccella posits at the core of her institutional project, it will be argued that her feminism: establishes maternal desire as women’s best and truly feminist choice; reiterates representations of heteronormative families; and promotes an anti-gender anthropological resistance.