It was a couple of days ago that the Ipsos research, carried out by Tiziana Ferrario and Paola Profeta for Laboratorio Futuro, was published, entitled Covid: a country poised between risks and opportunities - Women on the frontline [1]. and which draws attention to the issue of gender inequality within the global pandemic. This investigation starts from assumptions already sedimented and sadly known within the Italian social and economic fabric, namely the blatant asymmetry of opportunities and recognition in the world of work based on gender. A trend that is highlighted and perhaps even exacerbated by the current health emergency.
But let us take a step back.
In fact, it is no mystery that in Italy, and we are among the last in the whole of Europe, the female employment rate has been steadily lower than the male rate for at least a decade (we are talking about 49.5%, against a male rate of 67.6% on a sample of the population aged 15 to 64). The few employed women are also not active in the best-paid sectors on the labour market and tend to be in non-management roles (less than 30% as of 2018). The cause of this does not seem to be attributable to education levels; in fact, in Italy, out of every 100 young men who graduate, 60 are women.
Paola Profeta and Tiziana Ferrario, “Covid: a country poised between risks and opportunities”, Corrieredella Sera, 29 April 2020
So what is this due to gap employment?
“Why wasn't woman's relationship to production seen through her activity of reconstructing labour-power in the family? Why has her exploitation within the family not been seen as an essential function of the system of capital accumulation?”questions Carla Lonzi in We spit on Hegel [2]., speaking of the revolt of the working class from a Marxist perspective, in which women do not find their place, but are once again relegated to domestic and childcare, within the patriarchal system.
Fifty years later, the situation has remained virtually unchanged. The management of unpaid domestic work falls mainly to women, and 74.4% of them experience no sharing with their partners, while economic and bureaucratic management is mainly carried out by men. The same applies to childcare, where mothers are involved 60% more than partners.
That is not all. It is estimated that from 4 May onwards, with the start of Phase 2 and the partial reopening of some production sectors, it will be men who return to work. This is due to the fact that many of the companies that will reopen are mostly occupied by men, and partly because it will be difficult for many couples to reconcile work and childcare. So far, only two support measures for families have been devised with the economic decree Cura Italia: the baby sitter bonus and the extension of parental leave. Measures that are clearly insufficient to tackle such a deep-rooted and systematic problem. Some have proposed a “covid leave” so as not to turn working women into housewives.
A group of female researchers, with the appeal Towards a democracy of care [3], launched the proposal to support the work of babysitters, domestic helpers and carers, who are so central to families at the moment, and for whom no social security cushion has been provided in Cura Italia. These are all proposals that currently do not find an interlocutor in the institutions, the same ones that have created a technical-scientific committee composed only of men, and that seem almost deaf to the requests presented by a large segment of the population.
The Ipsos research highlights how an effective post-Covid-19 recovery cannot be envisaged without the achievement of gender equality. According to estimates by the International Monetary Fund, increasing female employment to the level of male employment would lead to a GDP increase of 11% in our country (Kinoshita and Kochhar, 2016). But these are not only purely economic factors. Gender equality is one of the goals of the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which ties Goal 5 with the building of a more socially and economically inclusive and stable society with a double thread.
Awareness is needed now, the dismantling of the stereotypical narrative that still exclusively delegates to women the role of care and dedication to the family and children, and sees work as a threat to the integrity of the household. Which does not consider domestic management as a wage-earning job and which excludes the sharing of tasks between partners to a large extent. Which cries demographic collapse, holding as solely responsible women too selfish to procreate, but which at the same time does not protect mothers and makes their access to the world of work hard and tortuous. We need “a position of the different that wants to effect a global change in the civilisation that has imprisoned it” [4].
It would not only benefit the entire economic and social system, but it would also benefit men, and many of them already do, by shirking the patriarchal dynamic of oppression and recognising their own privilege. But this is on a par with all the feminist struggles that continue to be tenaciously pursued and that exclude no one.
Happy 1st May to all.
Notes and Sources:
- Laboratoriofuturo
- Carla Lonzi, Sputiamo su Hegel - La donna clitoridea e la donna vaginale; Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, Milan 1974, p. 29
- Towards-a-democracy-of-care
- Carla lonzi, op.cit., p. 27
