LEGISLATING WOMEN'S RIGHTS: FEMONATIONALISM AND NATIONAL CONSERVATISM IN THE LEGAL AGENDA OF ITALIAN NATIONALIST PARTIES

The recent consolidation of right-wing nationalist parties in several European countries has raised growing concerns regarding the implications for women’s rights. In Italy, despite the presence of a female Prime Minister for the first time, the national-conservative orientation of Fratelli d’Italia and the Lega in government signals a potential distance from feminist positions, making the analysis of the implications for women’s rights particularly relevant. Although the relationship between nationalism and gender has been explored in various contexts, limited attention has been paid to the evolution of femonationalism and national conservatism in Italy since 2013 and their concrete impact on gender-related legislation. This thesis investigates the hypothesis that the rise of nationalist parties, culminating in the Meloni government, has led to both the restriction and instrumentalization of women’s rights through a legal agenda shaped by femonationalism and conservatism. Combining a legislative analysis of the last three Italian legislatures with qualitative discourse analysis of political and media content, the study focuses on two key areas: violence against women and women’s reproductive rights. Findings reveal that although legislative protections for women victims of violence and punishments for perpetrators have been maintained, these are frequently instrumentalised to portray non-Western men as sexual threats, serving anti-immigration rhetoric while resisting initiatives on prevention. Concurrently, the Meloni government has tightened abortion access and criminalised gestational surrogacy, reaffirming traditionalist and nationalist conceptions of women’s reproductive role. Migrant women are simultaneously marginalised, stigmatised, yet also valued for demographic reasons, becoming the object of the political economy of femonationalism.