rome
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Italian model and entrepreneur Pamela Genini lived a life that many would envy. The 29-year-old Milan resident had built a successful career as a real estate agent, focusing on seaside properties with high commissions. The popular influencer, discovered 10 years ago on a popular reality show, had just launched her own swimwear line with an influencer friend.
In a country where unemployment rates and precarious employment for people under 30 are stubbornly high, Genini has broken the conventional wisdom.
But one night in mid-October, Jeanini’s 52-year-old ex-boyfriend, Gianluca Sonchin, allegedly broke into her apartment and fatally stabbed her. Police were called, but when they arrived they found her dead on the balcony of her home. According to the trial judge in the case, Sungshin was by her side.
Sonsin, who is currently in solitary confinement awaiting formal charges, has been charged with voluntary manslaughter, brutality, stalking and premeditated conduct. His lawyer told CNN he has not yet answered questions about what happened.
Genini became the 72nd victim of femicide (usually defined as the killing of a girl or woman by a current or former intimate partner because of her gender) in Italy in 2025. According to the monitoring group Non Una di Meno (Not One Lesser), which keeps track of such murders. The group said four more women have been murdered since Genini, including Luciana Ronchi, 62, and Vanda Venditti, 80. Six additional cases are being investigated as possible murders.
According to Non Una di Meno, there were 116 murders of women last year, a slight decrease compared to the previous two years.
Three years ago, Giorgia Meloni became Italy’s first female prime minister. Critics have questioned whether she has done enough to combat rising violence against women in the country and persistent inequality in the workplace. Official statistics show that the birth rate in the first seven months of 2025 is 6.3% lower than in the same period in 2024, and that some Italian women earn up to 40% less than men in the same job.
Italy’s fight against murder goes back decades. Meloni’s government passed anti-stalking laws related to past murders, making domestic violence an aggravating factor in sentencing. This means people convicted in domestic violence cases now face longer prison terms, including potentially life imprisonment.
But many believe Meloni is not doing as much as expected when it comes to prevention.
Last week, Meloni’s Department of Education promoted legislation that would uphold the current ban on teaching sex education in kindergartens, elementary schools, and middle schools. The curriculum is one that experts have long seen as a precursor to educating young people about domestic violence and consent, with the goal of prevention.
Meloni, who changed the name of the long-standing Ministry of Equal Opportunities to the Ministry of Families, Fertility and Equal Opportunities upon being elected, advocated banning the continued provision of sex education as a means of preventing the introduction of “woke gender theory” in schools.
But rebels argue that denying young people basic sex education will keep the country rooted in its patriarchal past. “While Europe is moving forward, Italy is returning to the Middle Ages,” opposition lawmaker Alessandro Zan said last week.
Meloni’s office declined CNN’s request for comment on the issue, but Meloni has denied in the past that he opposes advancing women’s interests. As a single mother supporting a traditional family, she claimed it was “ridiculous” to accuse women of not doing enough for them.
“This is fake news against me,” she said in a recent address posted on her TikTok account. She consistently points to the government’s commitment to expand parental rights and give households tax breaks based on the number of children they have. The Ministry of Families, Fertility and Equal Opportunities also declined to comment.
Italy is one of the last European countries to not make sex education compulsory in its public school system, despite evidence cited by the United Nations that effective sex education provides opportunities to teach about gender-based violence.
It’s not just the possibility of domestic violence that makes being a woman in Italy so difficult. Equality indicators such as confidence in employment and starting a family are increasingly dismal. According to Italy’s national statistical institute ISTAT, Italy’s birth rate will fall again to 1.18 in 2024, marking the 16th consecutive year of steady decline. The provisional value for the first seven months of 2025 has further declined to 1.13.
Women have been criticized for their inability to have children, including Meloni, who has promoted the traditional family, criminalized surrogacy and pushed for legislation to give anti-abortion activists access to clinics. Meloni said at the 2023 event that too many young women are under pressure to focus on their careers first and put childbearing on the back burner.
But her critics say she has done little to provide affordable child care options, despite campaign promises made ahead of the 2022 election when she took power. Instead, the proposed day care center construction project was cut from the original budget.
ISTAT’s fertility report identifies several factors contributing to the decline in birth rates, including a decline in the number of babies born in the country since the 1970s, resulting in an increasingly smaller pool of potential parents. “Employment insecurity, particularly the prevalence of temporary labor contracts and low wages, also play a major role in Italy’s declining birthrate,” the study says.
Ariana Ricci, a 32-year-old human resources manager, voted for Meloni’s far-right Brother Italia party in 2022 in hopes of prioritizing work on pay equity, reproductive rights and women’s safety. Ricci, who graduated from Milan’s prestigious Bocconi University, also studied abroad, but says he wants to stay in Italy, succeed there, raise a family and own his own home.
But now she is renting a room in a student apartment in Rome to avoid living with her parents. She says she can barely pay her rent and utilities. Although she is easily employable on paper, she falls into the “precarious” job set. That means no one will give her a coveted permanent contract with job security and good benefits, which research shows tends to be offered to men first.
Rich works on a temporary contract with no job security, but it’s becoming increasingly common for companies to avoid paying generous benefits, especially mandatory maternity leave. In Italy, men are not allowed paternity leave.
“If I were to start a family on a temporary contract, my maternity leave would not be paid and I would not be able to return to work. Even if I had a job to return to, I would not be able to afford childcare,” she said. “What motivates you to start a family?”
She hoped that female leaders would understand the bondage that many young, employable women seemed to find themselves in. “I think the focus is instead on international affairs,” she told CNN. “Meloni made Italy look great abroad, but here in Italy he forgot about us in many ways.”
The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Gender Gap Report ranks Italy 85th out of 148 countries on issues such as economic participation and opportunity, education, health and political empowerment.
Italy has moved up two places since Meloni’s election, but remains at the bottom of Europe in terms of overall gender inequality. Italy, in particular, fell to 117th place in terms of women’s economic participation, down 6 points from the 2024 report.
Women’s participation in the Italian labor market has fallen to 41.5% over the past two years, while men’s participation rate is close to 60%. And, according to the Global Gender Gap Report, they earn up to 40% less than men in some fields.
According to a study published last year by the Executive Women Observatory at the Bocconi School of Management, only 39% of Italian management positions are held by women, and only 7% of Italian companies have a female CEO.
Elie Schlein, leader of Italy’s main opposition Democratic Party, is one of the most vocal critics of the Meloni government’s record on women’s issues.
“Women are the ones who will be hit the hardest. When you cut funding for welfare, schools and disability services, the burden of care falls on the family, and within the family, on the women,” Schlein said when asked on a TV show last week about Meloni’s government’s new budget cuts, which are currently being debated in the Italian Senate.
But not all women agree. Beatriz Costa couldn’t be happier with Meloni sitting in a coffee bar in central Rome with her six-month-old baby in her arms. Her 3-year-old child is at a public daycare center until lunchtime.
“I feel like I’ve been given permission to be a mother,” Costa told CNN, explaining that even as a child she felt pressured to have a career over a family, or at least start a career before considering motherhood. “The pressure to not have children is strong, and it’s hard to fight the pressure to work outside the home, to give up on the dream of starting a family and get a dog instead.”
Ms. Costa has a degree in communications and had already given birth to her first child when Ms. Meloni was elected. “I don’t know if we would have had a second child or would have one anyway because of her emphasis on traditional family, but I’m happy to be empowered to be a mother,” she said, adding that her husband has a good job as a tax accountant and her parents have provided her with child care and a home.
“Some might say it’s easy, but I feel like I’m practicing my Italian tradition, and I finally have permission to do it.”
