Female employment and the economic crisis

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.

Key words:

• female employment
• Italy
• inequality
• crisis
• labour market
• welfare

Notes

¹ 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.

² 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.

³ Labour force data published by the National Institute of Statistics, downloaded from the website http://dati.istat.it.

⁴ OECD data accessed on 3 March 2012 from http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx.

⁵ 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.

⁶ All data were published by the National Institute of Statistics and downloaded in March 2012 from the website: http://noi-italia.istat.it.

⁷ 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).

⁸ Data published by the National Institute of Statistics and downloaded in March 2012 from the website: http://noi-italia.istat.it.

⁹ The Italian coverage rate for services targeted at children between three and five years is, by contrast, almost universal across the country.

¹⁰ 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).

¹¹ 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).

¹² 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.

¹³ 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).

¹⁴ 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).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alberta Andreotti

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

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

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]