The impacts of smart working on women. Lessons from the first lockdown in Italy

ABSTRACT

Before the pandemic, Italy was one of the European countries with the lowest numbers of remote workers, both in the form of tele working and smart working based upon digital mobile technologies. In addition to increasing remote working to 40% in Italy, the pandemic has also led to a noticeable rise in the number of women working from home. This change presents a valuable opportunity to redefine the ways, times, and mechanisms of conducting work. However, it also needs to be assessed more closely in relation to gender impacts. While, on the one hand, evaluations on smart working during the pandemic must necessarily consider the extraordinary emergency conditions in which it has come to be, on the other, its criticalities have primarily affected women. With the aim to analyse the differential impacts of smart working, this paper discusses the results of a web survey conducted during the first lockdown in Italy, involving a total of 470 women working remotely from home. The results of the research are particularly interesting and appear to indicate at least three significant spheres for a differential analysis of the impacts: burden of care; availability of space/equipment, and skills.

KEYWORDS:

• Smart working
• gender
• inequalities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Luisa De Vita

Luisa De Vita is associate professor in Economic Sociology. She directs the PhD program in Applied Social Sciences and teaches Sociology of Organizations (bachelor's degree); Work, Organizations and Gender (master's degree). Her current research concerns inequalities, gender policies, diversity management, labour market and working conditions, with a focus on self-employment, women's entrepreneurship, and career pathways.

Tatiana Mazali

Tatiana Mazali is associate professor in communication and media studies, at Politecnico di Torino. She has been teaching since 2004 at Cinema and Media Engineering. Her research topics include: languages and aesthetics of digital media, creative and cultural industries (and professions) (ICC), contemporary transformations of work. Since 2007 she has co-directed the platform for digital creativity Officine Sintetiche.

Giovanna Campanella

Giovanna Campanella is Sociologist with a PhD in Applied Research in Social Sciences she was Professor of Sociology of Labour and Psycology of Labour at the University of Study ‘Guglielmo Marconi’ for ten years. Currently she is Independent Consultant and Expert on Labour Policy, Capacity Bulding, Administrative Innovation and Skills Up Activities in the Public Sector. From 2021 she is Responsable for the research activities on Life Long Learning at the Fondazione Brodolini.