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Italy’s first female prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is proof that a talented, fiercely determined woman can rise to the top in a society known for its traditional machismo.
Yet the recent battle over a new board for Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, the state-owned lender and strategic investor, also demonstrates how casual unthinking patriarchy still dominates much of Italian public life.
Gearing up to appoint a new board for the powerful financial institution, whose tentacles stretch across the Italian economy, Meloni’s government put forward a nominee list consisting almost entirely of men — despite CdP’s internal requirement that 40 per cent of the board be women.
But the government had a solution to that: it wanted CdP’s shareholders — namely, the finance ministry, which holds 82.7 per cent of CdP’s equity — to amend its articles of association to lower the quota for women.
That sat poorly with other stakeholders — Italy’s powerful banking foundations — and several shareholders’ meetings ended in deadlock.
Once leaked to the media, the stalemate triggered an outcry from opposition politicians and networks of professional women, furious at what they see as a bid to turn back the clock on women’s progress.
“A female prime minister is not enough if power remains in the hands of men,” Senator Raffaella Paita, of the small, centrist Italia Viva party, wrote in a post on X, lamenting the government’s “medieval choices”.
In an open letter, 80 Italian women with corporate board experience called the government plan “a negative signal regarding equal opportunities and protection of the under-represented gender”.
The signatories added that “the reason behind the reduction of gender quotas is not and cannot be the lack of possible female candidates”.
In fact, Italy has made significant strides in diversifying the boards of its biggest companies, prodded by a 2011 law that required listed companies and state enterprises to gradually increase female board representation.
The so-called ‘pink quota’, as it is known in Italy, was first set at 20 per cent, then at 33 per cent. In 2020, the law was amended to extend what were initially conceived as temporary quotas for another nine years, while raising the quota to 40 per cent.
According to headhunter Egon Zehnder’s most recent biannual global board diversity tracker, Italy is now one of just four countries in the world — alongside Norway, France and New Zealand — in which women account for more than 40 per cent of board members of the country’s biggest companies. That is up from the meagre 7 per cent when the law was adopted.
Yet in realms where women’s inclusion isn’t legally mandated, Italian public life remains deeply male dominated. Female CEOs — or even chief financial officers — at large Italian companies are few and far between. None of Italy’s most influential newspapers have ever had a female editor-in-chief.
Prestigious prizes continue to be awarded by all-male juries, or else juries with one or two token women. All-male panels are still common at conferences, though often moderated by pretty female television personalities.
In this milieu, the bid to reduce women’s presence on the board of CdP — through which the government exercises influence over Italy’s largest companies — triggered fears that Meloni’s government was reverting to Italy’s traditional patriarchal ways.
“We have made progress but that can never be taken for granted – there is always a risk that you go backwards,” said Paola Profeta, dean for diversity, inclusion and sustainability at Milan’s Bocconi University.
“We had the idea that you put in quotas, people get accustomed to us and nobody will try to go back to the previous equilibrium,” Profeta added. “But that is not the case.”
Ultimately, a compromise was found. CdP’s board was expanded from nine to 11 members, which allowed the rightwing coalition to give its favoured male candidates board positions while still respecting the 40 per cent female quota.
But the episode has left a bitter residue — evidence to many that female quotas are still required.
“Nobody wants quotas,” said Azzurra Rinaldi, director of the school of gender economics at the University of Rome Unitelma Sapienza.
“Women would like to be appointed because they are good professionals. But all the data shows us the same thing: when you don’t have quotas, the process of transformation takes longer. It’s just a patriarchal system that protects itself.”