ABSTRACT
One of the characteristics of the Italian peninsula is a sharp North-South gradient on many economic and labour market variables. This gradient is particularly marked in relation to female employment, making Italy a particularly useful ‘laboratory’ for studying changes in gender roles. Esping-Andersen's description of the decline of the ‘male breadwinner’ model and the search for a ‘new equilibrium’ in gender roles is suggestive, but the assumption that current processes will inevitably converge towards a relatively homogeneous social configuration (exemplified by the Scandinavian countries) is rather unconvincing. We will show in this article that the Italian case comprises macro-regions with very different female employment rates and highly differentiated welfare systems. Furthermore, one of the effects of the economic crisis has been to obstruct the entry of women into paid work, particularly in the South where employment rates are already at a very low level. When discussing trends and changes in women's roles, it is important to remember that the resulting transformations are plural, contingent and discontinuous and strongly shaped by prevailing socio-economic conditions. In the context of a prolonged and severe crisis, the differences between Northern and Southern Italy have been further accentuated, impeding the development of coherent policy responses and obstructing change in gender roles.
1. Introduction
Media coverage of the economic crisis in Italy has yielded striking representations of the position of women in the labour market. We will confine our attention to two sets of images which are particularly relevant. The first registers the importance of women's paid work, with all of the difficulties that accompany it. It includes the presence of women on picket lines and outside the gates of firms threatened with closure or redundancies. Often working in companies where women predominate, the militancy and determination of these women – often married with children – is striking:
We are willing to take any kind of action – they will not manage to send us away. All the women are united and our families are behind us in this battle, which is not easy. Some of our husbands have been laid off, we have young children and mortgages to repay. 1
The second set of images involves ‘discouraged’ women. The percentage of Italians falling into this category has risen during the crisis years, reaching 11.1% of the labour force in 2012, the highest rate in the European Union. These images capture the essence of the North-South divide in Italy, particularly as it relates to women. The first reflects the integration of women within the labour market, but mainly refers to the North of the country.2 The second refers mainly to women in the South of Italy who are situated outside the labour market and may describe themselves as housewives, although in many cases they would like to have a paid job.
The tensions that characterise these two areas of Italy are quite different, although the role of women has changed in both macro-regions and the same demographic tensions are found, associated with low fertility rates and population ageing. In what follows, we will question Esping-Andersen's account of the ‘incomplete revolution’, arguing that recent transformations in the role of women have given rise to plural, contingent and discontinuous outcomes which are not converging towards a single model. On the contrary, these changes must be understood in relation to the specific national and regional contexts in which they occur.
The article is divided into four sections: in the first, we briefly review Esping-Andersen's contribution (2009) to the debate about social change in Europe; in the second, we discuss the integration of women within the Italian labour force; in the third, we outline the contradictions that are emerging in social inequalities and care arrangements in the North and South, with a focus on collective early childcare services and transfer payments for care of the elderly and disabled; in the final section, we assess the impact of the ongoing economic crisis on the situation of women in Italy.
2. The social impact of changes in the role of women
Most commentators are in agreement that the massive entry of women into paid employment represents one of the most significant social transformations in post-war Europe (Goldin 2006; Esping-Andersen 2009). Rising levels of female employment are widely considered to be an important component of economic development, boosting demand, improving the efficiency of investment in education and training and encouraging economic innovation. Esping-Andersen (2009) observes:
The quiet revolution of women's roles, as Claudia Goldin (2006 ) calls it, is arguably a close rival to new technologies in terms of its seismic aftershocks touching, directly and indirectly, all major social institutions. And, like its rivals, it has not yet come to full maturation. Incomplete revolutions tend to be associated with major disequilibria. (Esping-Andersen 2009: 1)
This occurs primarily because the revolution is spearheaded by women from the privileged social classes, the highly educated. It is only when it starts to seriously trickle down to the lower social strata, that the revolution enters a state of maturity that, in turn, is a precondition for more egalitarian outcomes. Put bluntly, the quest for gender equality tends to produce social inequality as long as it is a middle-class affair. (Esping Andersen 2009: 169)
Citing the United States and Scandinavia – the most advanced countries in relation to gender equality – he suggests that they might serve ‘as ideal typical images of what is crystallizing throughout the advanced world’ (Esping-Andersen 2009: 173). He is convinced that other countries will follow, including Southern Europe, where the transformation in women's roles is occurring ‘at an astonishing pace’. In Spain, he observes, the female employment rate has increased by 65% since 1990. Focusing on younger women with children, he observes that ‘female employment is now close to US rates’ (Esping-Andersen 2009: 7):
In fact, we must conclude that the portrait of Spanish family life as the epitome of traditionalism no longer holds. Young parents behave increasingly like Americans when it comes to who reads with the children or washes the dishes. (Esping-Andersen 2009: 173)
The reason for the anomaly is that these indicators average across very different regional situations. We argue that the ‘incomplete revolution’ – and the transformations that accompany this – is occurring at a different rate and giving rise to different tensions in different parts of Italy. The Italian case comprises two macro-regions with very different female employment rates, varying from just 32.1% in the South to 56.0% in the North, a differential of almost 25 percentage points (for women aged 15–64 years). These different rates coincide with great disparities in family arrangements and public policies, demonstrating that the ‘incomplete revolution’ is non-linear, plural and divergent.
We share Esping-Andersen's conviction that contemporary European societies are undergoing far-reaching change in relation to gender roles, and that this is largely driven by (but not limited to) rising levels of female employment (Esping-Andersen 2009: 215). A key insight is that changes in women's roles are occurring in unexpected places, even where female employment remains low. At the same time, we are not convinced by Esping-Andersen's assumption that the advanced capitalist countries are progressing at different speeds along the same path. Even if female employment has increased in all of these countries, the context in which this has occurred has shaped the social and institutional consequences of this transformation in a very substantial way.
3. The partial integration of Italian women within the labour market
The (re-)entry of women into paid work in Italy started later and progressed more slowly than the United States or Scandinavia. At the time of the 1971 Census, female employment had fallen to a historical low, one of the lowest levels observed anywhere in Western Europe (25% in the North and 17% in the South). The North of Italy was one of the most intensely industrialised areas of Europe, although the majority of married women with children were full-time housewives. Female employment in the South was still concentrated in agriculture, whilst the cities offered few employment opportunities for women.
During the first three decades following WWII, the North-South divide decreased, at least when measured in terms of income per capita (Daniele and Malanima 2007). This was due to strong economic growth at national level, incisive regional development policies and infrastructural investments, although outmigration from the South also played a role. The state-led industrialisation process was not, however, of sufficient intensity to permanently alter labour market dynamics in the South. By the 1980s, the economic differential between North and South was once again increasing. Whilst economic restructuring and a decline in outmigration was pushing the South towards a chronic employment crisis, the Centre-North was embarking upon an intensive process of ‘new industrialisation’. As these distinct processes unfolded, two patterns of change in women's roles took shape, co-existing within a single national context (Figure 1).
Labour force participation rate by gender and macro-region in Italy, 1977–2010
Source: Istat, Rilevazione trimestrale and Rilevazione continua sulle forze di lavoro, 1977–2010 (downloaded from: http://seriestoriche.istat.it/fileadmin/allegati/ Mercato_del_lavoro/Tavole/Tavola_10.6.1.xlsx)
Source: Istat, Rilevazione trimestrale and Rilevazione continua sulle forze di lavoro, 1977–2010 (downloaded from: http://seriestoriche.istat.it/fileadmin/allegati/ Mercato_del_lavoro/Tavole/Tavola_10.6.1.xlsx)
The increase in female employment and labour force participation rates, after reaching a low in 1971, followed a complex trajectory, which can be divided into two periods. The first lasted from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s, when a severe economic crisis shook the country; the second began in the mid 1990s and continued until the onset of the current economic crisis.
During the first period, the increase in female activity rates was relatively contained in all regions of Italy – roughly 10 percentage points – with similar trends in the North and South. In the North, the increase was almost entirely due to the growth of female employment, whilst in the South, the supply of female labour fuelled an increase in unemployment. In 1978, the activity rates of women in the North and South differed by about 10 percentage points, rising to more than 15 in 1993. The differential in employment rates was even larger, rising from 13.2% in 1978 to 19.5% in 1993 (Pruna 2008). This increase in female labour force participation rates reflected the increasing importance of paid work to Italian women in general. The driving force behind this process was the rapid increase in educational attainments, which explains the great frustration of women in the South, who were often excluded from the labour market.
By the 1990s, the movement of married women into the permanent labour force in Northern Italy signalled a largely irreversible transition. This growth was mainly due to the expansion of dynamic sectors of the economy – ICTs, fashion, design and advanced producer services – and occurred against the backdrop of a very weak network of welfare services and an almost exclusive attribution of family responsibilities to women (Istat 2007: 18).
Employment growth in the North during the 1990s benefited women with relatively low educational attainments as women with a third-level qualification had already reached high rates of employment. This development was favoured by the greater availability of part-time work, which increased from 21% amongst women in 1995 to 31% in 2010 (Reyneri 2010). Although the latter figure is roughly in line with the European average (29%), the increase recorded is relatively high, roughly three times the European average. Over the same period, the rate of involuntary part-time work amongst women increased much more rapidly in Italy (from 16% to 37% of part-timers) than in Europe as a whole (from 14% to 17%).4
This growth in part-time opportunities contributed to a persistent presence of married mothers in the workforce. Important differences by educational attainments and family conditions remain, as women with children have lower employment rates compared to single women, and this is true both of the highly educated and those with low qualifications (Benassi and Cavalca 2008; Reyneri 2010).
During the 1990s, women with low educational attainments continued to be strongly penalised in the South, which was negatively affected by the ongoing decline of rural employment, deindustrialisation and the structural weakness of the service sector. Not only were married women not absorbed into paid employment, but young single women often remained outside the labour market. The female unemployment rate reached particularly high levels in the South during the 1980s (rising from 18.2% in 1980 to 31.0% in 1988), decreasing during the early 1990s only to increase once again over the following decade.5
Starting in the New Millenium, however, the female unemployment rate in the South declined considerably, levelling off at 15% in 2008. This was due to the growth of female employment from a low base as well as ‘discouragement’ effects. The difficulties involved in finding a relatively stable, regular job for young women continue to suffocate female activity rates in the South. As a result, where young, highly qualified women find stable employment, they tend to remain at work. This is partly due to the prevalence of public sector employment, which also provides a greater opportunity to reconcile paid work and domestic/care responsibilities.
As a result of these trends, a polarisation in life chances has occurred in the South between highly educated women and those with lower qualifications, who are mainly forced into the role of housewife. When in paid employment, less qualified women often work in low-paid service jobs with very long hours and low incomes (Villa 2010; Andreotti and Fellini 2012).
The sluggish rate of employment growth observed in the South means that women have generally not been drawn into the labour force, despite their increasing aspirations, rising education levels and positive attitudes towards paid work, to which we will return below. This constitutes a key aspect of the contradictory modernisation of women's work in Italy, and reflects the persistence of a profound territorial dualism unique among European countries.
As we have shown, there are qualitatively distinct forms of integration within the labour market in the North and South of Italy. Despite their differences, it is possible to identify aspects of ‘modernisation’ in both areas, driven by an increase in female educational participation. Women aged 15–19 years have a high rate of attendance at secondary school (approximately 80%) and (as in other European countries) tend to have higher attainments. There is still a gap between North and South in relation to third-level education, as the percentage of women aged 30–34 with a third-level degree in the South (18.9%) is almost 10 points below the equivalent figure in the North (27.1%; Istat 2010a).
As far as family formation and children are concerned, a process of convergence is evident, with a fertility rate in the South of 1.35 (1.43 in the North), and an age of 30.6 years at birth of first child, compared to 31.6 in the North. In both areas, it is quite common for children to live with their parents into adulthood and to delay leaving the family home (29–30 years) (Billari et al. 2008). The divorce rate (per 10,000 residents) is relatively low in both areas (11.9 in the South and 15.5 in the North), although the marriage rate (per 1000 residents) is somewhat higher in the South (4.6, compared to 3.7 in the North).6
Attitudinal data confirm this overall picture of convergence in attitudes and expectations. The last European Value Survey reveals only small differences between Northern and Southern Italian women regarding attitudes towards paid work: 91% of women in the South consider work important, as against 96% in the North. Similarly, 69% of women living in the South, in central age cohorts, agree with the phrase ‘people get lazy if they are not working’ (the equivalent figure is 67% in the North). Even more significantly, 17% of young adult women in the South strongly agree with the phrase ‘work always comes first’, while in the North the equivalent figure is just 8%.
This clearly reflects the importance that women attach to paid employment, and testifies to the fact that women in both the North and South desire to work and could be mobilised to enter the labour market, which would yield considerable social and economic benefits (Ferrera 2008; Naldini and Saraceno 2011; Del Boca et al. 2012).
Labour market differences between North and South form part of the diversified picture of social change, welfare provision and social inequality in contemporary Italy. In the South, there are high levels of unemployment and poverty and relatively low levels of regular employment, whilst welfare systems are starved of resources. The combined result is a vicious cycle based on the inter-generational transmission of social inequalities that penalises young people and children. We will explore this issue in the next section, before discussing the tensions that are emerging in relation to early childcare services and care for the elderly and disabled.
4. Local welfare systems
The Italian Regions are highly polarised in terms of poverty, having some of the highest and lowest rates in Europe. In the South, the poverty rate was 23% in 2010, whilst the equivalent rate in the North was just 5.3%. This differential becomes even more dramatic when we consider the proportion of children living in poverty. Comparative data for OECD countries indicate that the child poverty rate in the South of Italy is twice the national average of 15% (compared to a European average of 12.4%), and almost half of all families with three or more children (47.3%) fall into this category. This is the result of various factors, including the uneven distribution of unemployment risks, precarious jobs and the number of families with just one wage-earner (Barbieri et al. 2012).7
Within this dualistic context, welfare policies are largely ineffective in reducing the risk of poverty. If we consider child poverty rates before and after social transfers, the Italian differential is just 7 percentage points, compared to an average of 14 points for the EU-27 (Istat 2010a). It is not difficult to imagine that this average conceals large regional differences; given that average per capita spending on social welfare is just 52 Euro in the Southern Regions, less than half the national average of 111.8
In order to understand how these socio-economic factors interact with family structure and public policies, we will provide examples relating to two crucial areas of welfare provision: early childcare and subsidies for care of elderly and disabled people who are not able to look after themselves.
Collective early childcare services have been identified as a crucial factor both in tackling the effects of child poverty (Gunnarsson et al. 1999; Esping-Andersen 2009; Morel et al. 2011) and in sustaining female employment, with a positive impact on women with low formal qualifications (Saraceno 2003; OECD 2007; Del Boca et al. 2008; Ferrera 2008). This is precisely what the South needs, as it would contribute to breaking the ‘vicious cycle’ of low female participation rates, high poverty rates and weak welfare services. Unfortunately, the large-scale development of early childcare services is unlikely to obtain the necessary political support, given the present social and economic conditions. Collective childcare services for children aged 0–2 years are scarce throughout Italy and the Barcelona target has not yet been reached in almost any Region.9 The situation is particularly dramatic in the South, where only one-third (35.7%) of Municipalities have at least one collective early childcare service, compared with 65.8% in the North, and only 4.3% of children attend public childcare (15.1% in the North; Istat 2010a).
The South therefore remains trapped within a vicious cycle in which low labour force participation rates among women reduce the demand for welfare services and the low availability of these services penalises low-income families and reduces the demand for female employees. Those women who manage to find a job cannot rely on public services when seeking to reconcile these roles. The prevailing forms of work-family balance in the South are driven by the requirements of women with high educational attainments and high incomes, who have the highest employment rates and often the most favourable working conditions in terms of flexibility and parental leave.
The exclusion of low-qualified women from the labour market and the restriction of employment opportunities primarily to the well-educated contribute to increasing social inequalities. The indirect effect – which is crucial – is to undermine political pressure for the extension of the welfare state, impeding a new gender balance. The political system in the South is itself characterised by a conservative approach to welfare policies, which receive little public attention.
The employment crisis and cuts in public spending on services is making it more difficult to identify anything resembling a new ‘gender-equality equilibrium’ (Esping-Andersen 2009: 11). By contrast, the ‘familistic’ character of the gender division of labour in Southern Italy reinforces a vicious cycle that has impeded a shift from the family to collective provision of care, depressing demand and preventing the expansion of female employment.
In the North of Italy, where women in the central age cohorts are generally at work, a partial and selective process of defamilisation has taken place. Defamilisation here is predicated on an articulated set of arrangements, including a complex division of domestic labour comprising an inter-generational ‘pact’ and an expansion of paid domestic labour, primarily involving immigrant women. More than half (55%) of working women with children under two years in the North rely regularly on their own parents or parents-in-law for informal childcare, whilst one quarter use a public (15%) or private nursery (12%) and 11% rely on a child-minder (Istat 2005).10 These intergenerational links – which are often cemented by residential patterns (more than one quarter of adults live in the same Municipality as their parents) – enable low-paid women to remain within the labour market, even in the absence of effective public services.
In this context, it is evident that having access to grandparents becomes a powerful source of inequalities (Andreotti et al. 2005). Immigrant families, those from other regions and those whose own parents are still at work encounter greater difficulties in organising childcare.11 This effect is likely to become more pronounced in the future due to greater geographical mobility and recent increases in the retirement age.
Working mothers in the North face particular difficulties in reconciling work and family responsibilities, and a key challenge is to find a way of remaining within the labour market without creating gendered occupational ‘ghettos’ (Del Boca and Saraceno 2005; Naldini and Saraceno 2011). This marks a fundamental difference in relation to the South, as women in the Mezzogiorno have generally not obtained the extended social role underlying this dilemma. The main tensions found in this macro-region, by contrast, relate to the reproduction of inequalities and poverty. At the same time, women who do have this dual role in the South and have low qualifications face even greater difficulties than their Northern counterparts because they are forced to rely on a network of public services which is weaker and frequently of a lower quality.
The example of early childcare services highlights the different tensions in the two macro-areas in relation to the role of women and the demand for welfare. The next example reveals the differential impacts of specific policy measures and relates to the non-self-sufficient elderly. Collective services for people who are not self-sufficient are weak, costly and unevenly distributed in Italy. The principal policy measure is a monetary transfer: the Indennità di accompagnamento. This payment is provided on grounds of certified invalidity and is not means-tested. In 2007, 11.9% of elderly people received this payment, with a particularly high take-up rate in the South (Naldini and Saraceno 2011).
This subsidy has encouraged female employment in the North by enabling women to keep their jobs even in the presence of care burdens, whilst subsidising immigrant caregivers, who have been attracted to this part of Italy. It has been possible for women to delegate care in this way, maintaining overall responsibility for family members, because of the cheap wages and irregular status of many of the female immigrants who take up these jobs. In this context, an apparently neutral policy measure has a series of positive but unintended consequences for female employment.
In the South, by contrast, it is much more common for a female relative to take on a direct caring role. As alternative employment opportunities are scarce, care-givers frequently use the transfer payment as income. Transfer payments for care of the elderly and disabled thus create a further disincentive to female employment, reinforcing family responsibilities and the vicious cycle of low employment, poverty and depressed demand for welfare services. Due to the great social differences between North and South, therefore, it is quite possible for a single policy measure to yield diametrically opposed outcomes.
5. Impact of the crisis and the prospects of the ‘incomplete revolution’ in Italy
During its initial stages, the economic crisis had a disproportionate impact on male employment, due to its effect on traditionally ‘male’ sectors such as construction and manufacturing. As it has progressed, however, the crisis has effectively interrupted the expansion of female employment. The unemployment rate has risen rapidly over the past 4 years (by roughly 3 percentage points throughout Italy) reaching almost 20% in the South by mid 2012 (for those aged 15–64). Although the male rate has risen even more rapidly (by 4 percentage points in the North and by more than 6 points in the South), the gender gap in unemployment in Italy remains one of the highest in Europe. Interestingly, the female employment rate in the North is now higher than the male rate in the South for individuals aged 25–34 years.12
Older women have been somewhat less penalised by the crisis than younger women, due primarily to its effects on job creation. There has been a dramatic reduction in short-term contracts, where younger workers predominate (IRES 2010; Istat 2010a).13 In Italy as a whole, the rate of temporary employment contracts amongst women increased from 11% in 2000 to 15% in 2007, dropping back to 13% in 2010.14 The latter decline was not due to an expansion of permanent jobs but rather to the more rapid contraction of temporary employment. Young people in Italy are increasingly either in precarious jobs or outside the labour force (Figure 2). Even young women with a third-level education in the South have been hit by the crisis, while those with lower qualifications are more discouraged.
Age-specific (25–34 years) participation rate by macro-region and gender, 2004–2011
Source: Rilevazione continua sulle forze di lavoro, quarterly data downloaded from http://dati.istat.it.
Source: Rilevazione continua sulle forze di lavoro, quarterly data downloaded from http://dati.istat.it.
We have already hinted at the most likely effects of these trends in the immediate future: a further increase in unemployment, particularly amongst young men and women in the South and an increase in outmigration, particularly amongst the highly educated (cf. Mocetti and Porello 2010). The fact that a growing number of female graduates are forced to leave the country in search of jobs further undermines the link between educational attainments and female emancipation.
In the South, the crisis is likely to be particularly intense and selective in its effects. The incidence of poverty is destined to increase, particularly amongst large and single-earner families. The number of dual-income families is falling and public policies have little impact on low-educated women and their families. This highlights the importance of implementing reforms that can create the conditions for integrating women with and without qualifications into the labour force.
In the North, the larger number of dual-earner families affords some protection against the risk of poverty in the short-term. At the same time, the crisis and the policy measures that have accompanied it are undermining strategies to reconcile paid work and care responsibilities. A redistribution of the care burden from women to men may contribute to alleviating tensions in young families, but these tensions are set against the backdrop of cuts in local authority spending on social services.
6. Concluding remarks
Taking as our starting-point Esping-Andersen's recent book (2009), we have analysed how gender roles are changing in different regions of Italy. We have seen how these roles are shaped by the interaction of the labour market, the public welfare system and informal care arrangements, giving rise to different tensions. In the North, it is increasingly difficult to reconcile work and family roles, not least as a result of retrenchment. The fragile balance centred on the care work of grandparents and low-paid immigrant women is increasingly untenable. In the South, female participation and employment rates remain at an extremely low level, with far-reaching consequences in terms of child poverty and social inequalities. Apparently neutral policy measures can, in this context, give rise to very different outcomes, as we argued in relation to subsidies for care of the elderly and disabled.
Although there has been a sharp rise in educational attainments amongst young women, leading to a stronger orientation towards autonomy and positive attitudes towards paid work, gender roles in Italy do not appear to be converging towards a single model. Although the expansion in educational participation, the influence of the TV and other media have changed the cultural values and opinions of Northern and Southern women in similar ways, the lack of employment opportunities, the weakness of welfare and increasing inequalities in the South are pushing gender roles towards a highly unequal configuration.
The persistently large group of women excluded from regular forms of employment may be described as housewives, but increasingly perceive this condition as imposed and involuntary. Other women are pushed to emigrate or must accept lengthy commutes in order to find a job, whilst a third group struggles to get by with low-paid and unstable jobs and limited access to welfare services. We thus observe neither the ‘conservative’ defence of traditional gender roles nor an ‘incomplete revolution’ based on the gradual overcoming of gender inequalities.
The policies under discussion include incentives to firms which create new jobs for women and facilitate the entry of young people into paid employment. These policies may have a positive impact on young women in the North, but do not resolve tensions surrounding care arrangements for dependent family members. They are also unlikely to have an impact on the depressed labour market of the South, where women are discouraged from – but ready to – entering the labour market and male employment is in decline. This is due to the fact that there are few employment occasions, given the weak network of firms and because incentives cannot compete with informal and black market activities. The positive trends in female employment visible between 2000 and 2008 have been slowed down by the crisis and the reserves of labour in the South appear destined to remain under-utilised, excluding new patterns of economic development, even though a raise in female employment (central age cohorts) is visible in 2012.
In order to change this state of affairs, it is necessary to break the vicious cycle of social inequalities in the South of Italy. One of the most urgent tasks is to create employment opportunities for young people, particularly low-skilled young women. An employment policy of this type would be particularly effective if oriented towards the goal of developing welfare services, as this would trigger an extended transformation of women's roles in accordance with the model of the ‘incomplete revolution’.
Arguably, overcoming the large employment gap that separates low-educated women in the North and South would contribute to pressure for welfare reform to reduce the care burden that is currently attributed to women. Effective paternity leave, accessible and high-quality childcare for pre-school children and a network of services for care of the elderly and disabled are obvious examples of what is required, but these demands are increasingly difficult to articulate, let alone to achieve, in a situation where only a minority of women have the opportunity to take up paid employment.
Footnotes
OMSA worker interviewed by Elisabetta Reguitti for Articolo21 and accessed on 6 November 2011: http://www.articolo21.org/604/notizia/omsa-al-via-le-delocalizzazioni-ma-le.html.
Throughout this article we will use the terms ‘North’ and ‘South’ to describe the two macro-areas of Italy. In the former we include the regions of the Centre, as these are more similar to the North than to the South, at least as far as women's roles are concerned. The North includes the following Regions: Valle d'Aosta, Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Veneto, Trentino Alto Adige, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Marche, Umbria, Lazio, Abruzzo. All other Regions are included in the South.
Labour force data published by the National Institute of Statistics, downloaded from the website http://dati.istat.it.
OECD data accessed on 3 March 2012 from http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx.
Data published by the National Institute of Statistics and downloaded in March 2012 from the website http://seriestoriche.istat.it/fileadmin/allegati/Mercato_del_lavoro/Tavole/Tavola_10.8.1.xls. Data collection procedures and definitions were modified by the National Institute of Statistics in 1992 and 2003, which creates interruptions in the data series. A sharp drop is evident in the official estimate of the female unemployment rate in the South between 1992 (28.6%) and 1993 (20.0%), which should be borne in mind when analysing Figure 1.
All data were published by the National Institute of Statistics and downloaded in March 2012 from the website: http://noi-italia.istat.it.
Italy has the lowest percentage of all EU member states for dual-income families, according to EU SILC data for 2007 (58.4%, compared to a European average of 76.1% (Istat 2010b).
Data published by the National Institute of Statistics and downloaded in March 2012 from the website: http://noi-italia.istat.it.
The Italian coverage rate for services targeted at children between three and five years is, by contrast, almost universal across the country.
In Denmark, a high percentage of families (60%) also look to grandparents to help with childcare. However, the intensity of involvement is very different, with grandparents in Denmark contributing an average of seven hours per week, compared with no less than 27.8 hours per week in Italy – almost the equivalent of a full-time job (Esping Andersen 2009).
In this regard, it is interesting to note that the Minister for the Family in Germany, Kristina Schröder, recently proposed a ‘Family Time’ scheme whereby grandparents would have the right to leave from work in order to assist with caring for young children (Corriere della Sera2012).
Quarterly data from the Rilevazione continua sulle forze di lavoro published by the National Institute of Statistics, downloaded in October 2012 from the website http://dati.istat.it.
If we consider overall employment in Italy between 2008 and 2010, semi-autonomous positions (collaborazioni) declined by 15%, whilst temporary contracts fell by almost 5% in the North and 8% in the South. Qualified women in the South have a particularly high rate of atypical contracts (Avola 2009; Istat 2011).
A similar trend was observed for OECD countries in general, with an initial rise from 9.9% in 2000 to 11.1% in 2007, followed by a decline, to reach 10.8% in 2010 (Comparable OECD data downloaded from http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx, 3 March 2012).
References
Alberta Andreotti, Research Fellow in economic sociology at the University of Milan-Bicocca and she is Associate member of the program Cities are back in Town, based at Sciences-Po, Paris. Her research activities focus on social capital and social networks, urban poverty and local welfare systems, cities and middle classes, female employment with particular emphasis on the Italian North-South divide. She published a book on social capital, chapters in edited volumes and several articles in international reviews (AJEAS, IJURR, Urban Studies, Global Networks). E-mail: [email protected]
Enzo Mingione, Professor of Sociology at the University of Milano-Bicocca. He is President of Doctorate School SCISS (Studi Comparativi e Internazionali in Scienze Sociali). He has been the President of the RC on Urban and Regional Development, one of the founders of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Among his books: Fragmented Societies, Blackwell, Oxford (1991); (Ed) Urban poverty and the Underclass, Blackwell, Oxford (1996); Sociologia della Vita Economica, Carocci, Roma (1998); Il Lavoro, together with Enrico Pugliese, Carocci, Roma (2010). E-mail: [email protected]
Jonathan Pratschke, Research Fellow at the Department of Economics and Statistics of the University of Salerno, Italy. His main research interests relate to the spatial articulation of social inequalities in relation to the labour market, housing, education, welfare and well-being. He has published books, chapters and journal articles in English and Italian, with a particular focus on the application of advanced statistical modelling techniques to social data. E-mail: [email protected]