Italy is one of the most committed middle-power implementers of the Women, Peace and Security agenda. Yet two decades of sustained engagement have had only limited effect in the domestic political arena and in the country’s foreign policy, even under its first female prime minister.

Since the UN Security Council adopted resolution 1325 in 2000, Italy has produced five successive national action plans on Women, Peace and Security (WPS). The current fifth national action plan, covering the years 2025-2029, strengthens the emphasis on women’s full, equal and effective participation in peace processes and decision-making. Italy has also institutionalised the roles of gender advisers and gender focal points within its Ministry of Defence, providing dedicated training and deploying specialised personnel within Italian contingents in Lebanon, Kosovo and, previously, Afghanistan. Italy is the second-largest troop contributor to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), where it has maintained a continuous presence since 1979 and where it has held the position of Force Commander since 2025. Furthermore, Italy’s Center of Excellence for Stability Police Units (CoESPU) in Vicenza has trained approximately 15,000 peacekeepers from 128 countries.

This commitment is therefore far from merely symbolic or peripheral to Italy’s foreign policy. Rather, it reflects one of the most institutionally developed WPS architectures among comparable middle powers. Yet sustained international engagement with the WPS agenda has had only limited political effect at the domestic level and has not fostered deeper debate on incorporating gender equality into Italian foreign policy, including the possible adoption of a feminist foreign policy (FFP). This disconnect has persisted under both centre-left and centre-right governments, but appears particularly significant under Giorgia Meloni, the first female prime minister in Italian history.

The Italian case thus raises an important analytical puzzle: how can a policy agenda that is formally endorsed, institutionally embedded and actively implemented internationally remain largely without impact on domestic political debate and foreign-policy orientations? What political, institutional, ideological and societal factors account for this disconnect and constrain the translation of WPS commitments into a more comprehensive reconsideration of foreign-policy priorities?

The disconnect has a domestic mirror

The clearest evidence of this disconnect is not simply that WPS goes undiscussed at home. It is that the very pillar Italy champions abroad – women’s participation – has been only slowly reflected within its own diplomatic institutions. The share of Italian female ambassadors rose from just 5.1 per cent in 2003 to 13.5 per cent in 2024. This is an improvement, but one that still leaves Italy roughly 15 percentage points below the EU average. In 2024, only 19 of Italy’s 134 ambassadors were women, and only four of these were accredited to G20 countries. This gap is particularly significant in diplomatic postings across the Mediterranean and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, where diplomatic leadership directly engages with the security and stabilisation issues at the core of the WPS agenda – but where Italian missions continue to be overwhelmingly led by men.

The contrast is especially evident in Libya, where Italy has long been deeply engaged in the peace process and retains some capacity, albeit constrained, to advocate for greater women’s participation. Despite growth in the number and visibility of women-led civil society organisations, networks and advocacy initiatives in Libya since 2011, women have remained significantly under-represented in UN-facilitated negotiations. Indeed, there is little public evidence that Italy has systematically mobilised its diplomatic influence to make women’s participation a prominent political priority.

This limited systematic mobilisation is mirrored by a persistent representation gap within Italy’s own diplomatic corps, the very institution through which such advocacy could be pursued. Women’s participation thus emerges as a principle that Italy formally promotes in international peace and security contexts but has implemented less consistently, both in its bilateral diplomacy and within its own foreign-policy institutions. Such asymmetry provides a particularly revealing illustration of the disconnect between Italy’s international commitment to WPS on the one hand and the domestic institutional and political impact of that same WPS agenda on the other.

Why peacekeeping travels, and representation does not

This imbalanced pattern can be better understood by situating the Italian case within an international-relations perspective and, more specifically, through the lens of a middle-power approach. As a middle power, Italy has historically sought to build international credibility less through declaratory leadership than through reliable contributions to multilateral institutions and initiatives. Peacekeeping represents one of the clearest expressions of this foreign-policy identity. The integration of gender considerations into peacekeeping fits relatively easily within a policy domain in which Italy is already deeply engaged. The deployment of a gender adviser within an Italian contingent in UNIFIL, for example, has strengthened Italy’s reputation as a reliable multilateral actor. 

Measures that extend beyond this operational dimension are more politically demanding. Addressing gender imbalances in ambassadorial appointments or making women’s participation a concrete priority in relations with governments involved in fragile peace processes directly engages institutional interests, political choices and potentially contested understandings of gender equality. Such measures can therefore entail domestic political and institutional costs, especially in terms of political polarisation. From this perspective, Italy’s uneven implementation of WPS shows its preference for forms of engagement that can be incorporated into existing niches of specialised engagement without contesting foreign-policy trajectories. 

Not an Italian anomaly

Italy is not an exception. Other middle powers whose international standing rests primarily on technocratic and multilateral contributions, rather than on norm entrepreneurship – the active promotion and diffusion of new international norms – similarly implement the less politically visible components of WPS while leaving its more demanding participation-oriented dimensions, both external and domestic, largely unfulfilled. By contrast, the experience of countries such as Sweden suggests that even when a feminist foreign policy is formally abandoned, some of its associated commitments and practices nevertheless persist.

A narrower and more achievable ask

Closing this gap does not require Italy to adopt a feminist foreign policy or redefine its foreign-policy identity. More targeted measures could provide a pragmatic starting point. First, Italy could introduce a time-bound target to increase women’s representation among ambassadors to Mediterranean and MENA countries. This would be more limited and politically feasible than a system-wide quota, but it would still address an area in which WPS considerations are particularly relevant. Second, Italy could use its bilateral relations and engagement with the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) to advocate more consistently for women’s meaningful participation in Libya’s political and peace processes.

Italy’s experience shows that a strong international commitment to WPS does not automatically translate into domestic political and institutional change. Rather than failed implementation, the Italian case reveals selective implementation: WPS has advanced where it can be integrated into established practices of multilateralism and peacekeeping, while its more politically demanding implications for representation and foreign-policy priorities remain limited. Bridging this divide would make WPS a more coherent principle of Italian foreign policy, both abroad and at home.

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