In her maiden confidence speech to parliament Tuesday Italy's first female Premier Giorgia Meloni paid tribute to the many illustrious women who had preceded her including educational reformer Maria Montessori, first woman House Speaker Nilde Iotti, first woman minister Tina Anselmi, firt female Senate Speaker Elisabetta Casellati, Nobel prize winning physicist Rita Levi Montalcini, astronaut and first International Space Station European woman commander Samantha Cristoforetti, and outgoing justice minister Marta Cartabia, the first woman Constiutional Court justice, and others who had paved the way for her to break "this ultimate glass ceiling and become prime minister".
Among those cited were: 19th century Italian reunifcation campaigner Cristina Trivulzio di Belgioioso, "an elegant organizer of salons and barricades," noblewoman, patriot and protagonist of the Risorgimento and the fight for Italian unity.
Rosalie Montmasson, "so stubborn as to leave with Garibaldi's Thousand who made Italy".
Alfonsina Strada, a pioneer of Italian women's cycling, who "pedalled hard against the wind of prejudice".
Montessori and teacher and Nobel prize winning writer Grazia Deledda, who both "with their example opened wide the gates of education to all the country's girls".
And also: journalist and writer Oriana Fallaci; investigative journalist Ilaria Alpi, slain along with her cameraman Miran Hovratin while probing arms trafficking in Somalia; journalist Mariagrazia Cutuli, slain in Afghanistan; particle physicist and first female CERN chief Fabiola Gianotti,; and Catholic woman Chiara Corbella Petrillo, who died of cancer after refusing treatment so her son could be born after her first two children had died after their births.
"Thank you," Meloni told the Lower House in her confidence speech, "thanks you for showing the value of Italian women, as I hope to do so too".
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