Italy has a femicide problem. Critics say Prime Minister Georgia Meloni should do more to fix it

Demonstrators clash with police during a protest against "The General State of the Birth Rate" conference on Italy's sliding birthrate, in Rome, Italy, May 10, 2024. (Yara Nardi/Reuters via CNN Newsource)

ROME -- Italian model and entrepreneur Pamela Genini had what many might consider an enviable life. The 29-year-old Milan resident was a successful real estate agent focused on high-commission seaside properties. A thriving influencer who was discovered on a popular reality TV program a decade earlier, she had just launched her own swimwear line with an influencer friend.

In a country where the rate of unemployment and precarious employment for the under-30s is stubbornly high, Genini had broken the mold.

But one evening in mid-October, Genini’s 52-year-old ex-boyfriend Gianluca Soncin is alleged to have entered her apartment and fatally stabbed her. Police were called but arrived to find her dead on her balcony. Soncin was at her side, the investigating judge in the case said.

Soncin, currently in solitary confinement awaiting formal charges, faces accusations of voluntary homicide, cruelty, stalking, and premeditation. His lawyer told CNN he had not yet answered any questions about what happened.

Genini was the 72nd victim of femicide – usually defined as when a girl or woman is killed because of her gender, often by a current or former intimate partner – in Italy in 2025, according to the observatory group Non Una Di Meno (Not One Less), which keeps a tally of such killings. Four more women have been killed since Genini, according to the group, including Luciana Ronchi, 62, and 80-year-old Vanda Venditti. Six more cases are being examined as potential femicides.

Last year, there were 116 cases of femicide, according to Non Una Di Meno, a slight decrease from the previous two years.

Three years ago, Giorgia Meloni became Italy’s first female prime minister. Critics question whether she has done enough since to tackle increasing rates of violence against women in the country, or challenge persistent inequality in the workplace. Official figures show that birth rates dropped by 6.3 per cent in the first seven months of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, and that some Italian women earn up to 40 per cent less than men in the same jobs.

Italy’s battle with femicide goes back decades. Meloni’s government has passed anti-stalking legislation tied to previous femicides, and has made domestic violence an aggravating factor in sentencing, meaning those who are convicted in domestic violence cases now face longer prison terms for offenses, including life sentences in some cases.

But many believe Meloni has not done as much in terms of prevention as they had expected.

Meloni’s Education Ministry last week pushed forward a law that upholds the current ban on teaching sex education in kindergartens, primary schools and middle schools, a curriculum long seen by experts as a precursor to educating young people about domestic violence and consent, with an eye to prevention.

Meloni, who changed the name of the long-standing Ministry for Equal Opportunity to the Ministry for the Family, Birth Rate and Equal Opportunities upon her election, has framed the continuing ban on sex education as a way to prevent the introduction of “woke gender theory” in schools.

But opposition groups argue that denying young people exposure to basic sex education keeps the country grounded in its patriarchal past. “While Europe moves forward, Italy is returning to the Middle Ages,” opposition parliamentarian Alessandro Zan said last week.

Meloni’s office declined CNN’s request for comment on the issue, but she has in the past denied being against advancing women’s interests. As a single mother who supports the traditional family, she has insisted that it is “ridiculous” to accuse her of not doing enough for women.

“It’s fake news against me,” she said recently, in an address she posted on her TikTok account. She consistently points to her government’s pledge to expand parental rights and give tax breaks to families based on the number of children they have. The Ministry for the Family, Birth Rate and Equal Opportunities also declined to comment.

Italy is one of the last European countries not to have compulsory sex education in the public school system, despite evidence cited by the United Nations that effective sex education offers an opportunity to teach about gender-based violence.

It’s not just the potential for domestic violence that makes being a woman in Italy feel so challenging. Parity indicators, which include employment and confidence in having a family, are increasingly dismal. In 2024, Italy’s already low birth rate fell once again, to 1.18, marking the 16th year in a row of steady decline, according to Italy’s ISTAT national statistical institute. Provisional figures for the first seven months of 2025 showed a further drop, to 1.13.

Women are blamed for not having babies, including by Meloni, who has touted the traditional family and pushed forward legislation criminalizing surrogacy and allowing anti-abortion activists to access clinics. At an event in 2023, Meloni said too many young women were being pressured to focus on their careers first, and put off having children.

Her critics say, however, that she has done little to help provide affordable child care options, despite campaign promises ahead of the 2022 election that launched her to power. Instead, proposed plans to build day-care centers were slashed from her first budget.

The ISTAT fertility report identifies several factors in the declining birth rate, including an increasingly small pool of potential parents due to the lower number of babies born in the country since the 1970s. “Employment insecurity, particularly the prevalence of temporary work contracts, and low wages, also have a heavy impact on Italy’s falling birth rate,” the study says.

Ariana Ricci, a 32-year-old human resources manager, voted for Meloni’s hard-right Brothers of Italy party in 2022, hoping she would prioritize efforts to tackle wage disparity, reproductive rights, and women’s safety. Ricci, who graduated from the prestigious Bocconi University in Milan, also studied overseas but says she wants to stay in Italy and be successful there, raise a family and own her own home.

At the moment, however, she’s renting a room in a student apartment-share in Rome in order to avoid moving back in with her parents. She says she’s barely able to pay her rent and utility bills. She is easily employable on paper, but falls into the “precarious” job set, meaning no one will give her the coveted permanent contract, which comes with job security and ample benefits, but which research shows tends to be offered first to men.

Ricci works on temporary contracts, which do not afford her job security, but have become an increasingly common way for companies to avoid paying generous benefits, especially mandatory maternity leave. Men are not granted paternity leave in Italy.

“If I were to start a family on a temporary contract, I wouldn’t get my maternity leave paid, I wouldn’t get my job back, and I couldn’t afford childcare even if I did have a job to go back to,” she said. “What incentive is that to have a family?”

She had hoped a female leader would see the bind many young, employable women seem to be in. “I’m seeing a focus on international affairs instead,” she told CNN. “Meloni has made Italy look great abroad, but she has forgotten us here in Italy in many ways.”

The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Gender Gap Report ranks Italy 85th out of 148 countries on issues like economic participation and opportunity, education, health, and political empowerment.

While Italy has risen two rankings since Meloni’s election, it remains among the lowest-placed countries in Europe for the overall gender gap. Notably, Italy fell to 117th place on women’s economic participation, dropping six points since the 2024 report.

Women’s participation in Italy’s labor market has slumped in the past two years to a rate of 41.5 per cent while men enjoy nearly 60 per cent participation. And they earn up to 40 per cent less than men in some sectors, according to the Global Gender Gap Report.

Only 39 per cent of management positions in Italy are held by women, and just seven per cent of Italian companies have female CEOs, according to research published last year by the Bocconi School of Management’s Executive Women Observatory.

Elly Schlein, the leader of Italy’s main opposition Democratic Party, has been one of the most vocal critics of the Meloni government’s record on women’s issues.

Asked on a TV program last week about new budget cuts proposed by Meloni’s government that are currently under debate in the Italian senate, Schlein said: “The hardest hit are women. When you cut welfare, schools, and funding for services for people with disabilities, the burden of care falls on families, and within families, on women.”

But not all women agree. Beatrice Costa couldn’t be happier with Meloni as she sits at a coffee bar in central Rome, holding her six-month-old baby in her arms. Her three-year-old is around the corner in a state-run nursery school until lunchtime.

“I feel like I have permission to be a mother,” Costa told CNN, explaining that she had felt pressure growing up to have a career over family, or at least start her career first before thinking about becoming a mother. “The pressure not to have children is strong, the pressure to work outside the home, to give up the dream of having a family, to just get a dog instead, is hard to fight.”

Costa, who has a university degree in communications, had already given birth to her first child when Meloni was elected. “I don’t know if we had a second child because of her focus on the traditional family, or if we would have anyway, but I’m glad I am empowered to be a mother,” she said, adding that her husband has a good job as a tax accountant and that they were given a home by her parents, who also help with childcare.

“Some might say I have it easy, but I feel like I’m carrying out an Italian tradition and finally I have permission to do it.”

By Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN