Female Leadership, Gender Neutralization, and the Populist Radical Right: The Case of Giorgia Meloni

The growing presence of women at the helm of populist radical right parties has raised important questions about the role of gender in the construction and perception of political leadership. While existing literature has explored the feminization of leadership, the rise of strongwomen, and the strategic value of female leaders, less attention has been devoted to how female leadership is perceived and evaluated within populist radical right parties. This article addresses this gap by examining the case of Giorgia Meloni and Fratelli d’Italia, investigating whether gender constitutes a meaningful category through which leadership is interpreted within the party. Drawing on 21 semi-structured interviews with party representatives at different organizational levels, the article analyses perceptions of leadership in relation to electoral appeal, membership recruitment, and internal party functioning. The findings point to a process of gender neutralization whereby Meloni is primarily evaluated through apparently gender-neutral qualities such as coherence, sacrifice, competence, and loyalty rather than through explicitly gendered criteria.