What a fine few weeks for feminism it has been! First Liz Truss became Britain’s third female prime minister and now Giorgia Meloni is expected to be Italy’s first ever female prime minister. The former is a deeply unserious person who used to be most famous for a viral rant about cheese before gaining global recognition for helping to crash Britain’s economy in record time. The latter is the most right-wing Italian leader since 1945: a bigot with a history of homophobic, anti-immigrant and anti-choice views who represents a post-fascist party and hasn’t definitively distanced herself from fascism.
Scrap all those inconvenient facts, though. It’s not their policies or their moral compasses that matter: the most important thing about Truss and Meloni is that they are women. Sisters are doing it for themselves, and all that. (“It” being far-right politics and crashing the economy.) Like it or not, representation matters: you can’t be what you can’t see. I might not agree with Truss and Meloni’s policies but I can put my lefty political leanings aside for a moment and admit that they are both inspirational trailblazers. Little girls can finally grow up secure in the knowledge that they have what it takes to help drive the pound to record lows. They can go to sleep at night knowing that authoritarianism isn’t just for the boys. That’s progress, isn’t it? That’s worth celebrating, right?
Hillary Clinton seems to think so. “Every time a woman is elected to head of state or government, that is a step forward,” Clinton told an Italian reporter this month in reference to Meloni – whom she admitted she didn’t know much about. She added a quick caveat: “Then that woman, like a man, has to be judged on what she stands for, on what she does.” I have a feeling that Clinton Googled Meloni after that interview, saw what she stands for and regretted those remarks.
I would love to see more women in powerful positions but representation has its limits: simply having a vagina and a fancy job title doesn’t make you a feminist role model. Although that depends on how you define “feminist”, of course. Truss has said she would describe herself as a “Destiny’s Child feminist”. Which is a perfect Trussism, really, because – like a lot of things she says – it sounds like something you might come out with after inadvertently sniffing a lot of glue. What she means, she clarified, is that women should be treated as “individuals with their own abilities” who are “empowered” by the state to achieve their potential. Sounds like another way to say self-interested careerist to me.
It would be nice to believe that every time a woman is elected to head of state or government, it represented, as Clinton opined, a step forward. Alas, I think the only progress being made is on the right: conservatives have discovered that women (particularly mothers) and minorities can be useful figureheads and ambassadors. They help soften authoritarian agendas and deflect from accusations of misogyny, racism and homophobia. Numerous rightwing commentators have accused liberals of being sexist for not applauding Meloni’s success, for example. The conservative Australian Sky News host Chris Kenny ranted that that the “feminists of Australia” are not “hailing” Meloni’s political success because they “want more leftwing women in politics; women on the right just don’t seem to count for them”. Weird that, isn’t it? Weird that feminists want more women in politics who stand up for their rights rather than trying to get rid of them?
Rightwingers love complaining about identity politics but they are the true masters of it. If you’re a minority or a woman and your only concern is getting ahead in politics, it is beginning to seem that you are a lot better off cynically hitching your wagon to the right rather than the left. It’s much easier to be a woman in politics, after all, if your platform is focused on how women should have fewer rights. I’d bet my firstborn child that if a woman ever becomes the US president, she will be a Republican rather than a Democrat. When fascism comes to America, a popular saying goes, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. The way things are going, I’m starting to wonder if it will be wrapped in a #girlboss T-shirt and carrying a handbag.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
