The Patriarch is Dead, Long Live the Patriarchy: Berlusconi, Women, and the Quality Press in Our Kulturkampf Zeitgeist

Silvio Berlusconi was the archetypical representative of the Western patriarchal culture, now constituting the basis of a cultural war fought by the radical right in the public sphere of the Western world. Nevertheless, there is limited research into how journalists of the quality press address the cultural patriarchy of political leaders, such as Berlusconi. The scope of the current article is to investigate this phenomenon by paying attention to how the French and Italian quality press represented women associated with the life of Berlusconi, the day following his death. The research, based on a critical discourse analysis, shows that the male-controlled press favorable to or critical of Berlusconi tends to circulate a patriarchal culture comprising the reproduced marginalization of women in society.