We need to talk about gender: anti-feminist, anti-gender backlash all’italiana

ABSTRACT This paper engages with the topic of anti-feminist, anti-gender backlash in contemporary Italy in three steps. Firstly, it reviews some recent research examining the various ramifications of anti-feminist and anti-gender discourse in the Italian context. The role that the Catholic Church has played in championing the crusade against gender, most visibly by fabricating the so-called ideologia del gender (gender ideology), is addressed extensively together with the analysis of a cluster of heterogeneous men’s groups involved in backlash efforts to endorse and spread anti-feminist sentiments. The focus then shifts to younger generations’ struggles with making sense of and negotiating their own gendered presence in the twenty-first century Italian postfeminist context. Finally, by directing attention to the still precarious and marginal status of Gender Studies as a disciplinary field in Italian academia, the paper seeks to re-assert the relevance of Gender Studies, and to enliven the debate on the full academic institutionalisation of the field in Italy.