Pandemic sets back Italian women’s long fight for jobs
ROME — One of hundreds of thousands of women in Italy who lost jobs in the pandemic, Laura Taddeo has a masters degree in tourism, speaks fluent English and Spanish and some Arabic.
Her contract as a tour operator with a high-end Italian hotel company expired in May, just as COVID-19 travel restrictions were crippling tourism, and it wasn’t renewed. But whenever tourism does rebound, Taddeo, who cuts a confident figure, will brace for the job interview questions.
“It’s not, ‘What have you studied? What languages do you speak?’ but ‘Do you have a family? Do you intend to have children?’ ” Taddeo, who is 33, said every man who has interviewed her asked her that right off the bat.
Worldwide, working women have paid a painfully high price during the pandemic as many quit jobs to care for children when schools closed or saw employment evaporate in hardhit retail and hospitality businesses. But Italian women went into the COVID-19 crisis already struggling for decades to expand their presence in the workforce.
Among the 27 European Union nations, Italy ranks next to last, just above Greece, in terms of women’s participation in the workforce.
About 54% of women in Italy had jobs in 2019, before the pandemic hit, compared with 73% for men and an EU average for women of around 67%. The rate dropped to about 49% for women and 67% for men in Italy by the end of last year, reflecting the pandemic’s blow to the economy.
Deeply rooted Italian societal attitudes that hold a woman’s main vocation is in the home help to explain the lag.
“It’s not so much that women shouldn’t work, but they shouldn’t neglect the household. That’s the responsibility of women,” said sociologist Chiara Saraceno of the widespread attitudes.
Of 456,000 jobs lost in 2020 in Italy, where the pandemic first erupted in the West, 249,000 were held by women, many of whom had been working as waitresses, store clerks, nannies and caretakers for the elderly.
According to the national statistics bureau, ISTAT, between November and December, when Italy was grappling with a devastating resurgence of infections, 99,000 of the 101,000 jobs that disappeared were women’s.
Even before the pandemic, Italy’s economy had never fully recovered from the economic
crisis of more than a decade ago. The Bank of Italy has estimated that GDP would improve by some 7 percentage points if the proportion of women in the workforce climbs to 60%.
“We’re talking about women who are more educated than men, but that our country doesn’t succeed in employing,” ISTAT’s central director Linda Laura Sabbadini said in an interview last month with the weekly Io Donna, (I, Woman). “The point is that, as long as women are underutilized in respect to their potential, Italy won’t grow.”
A chunk of the $250 billion in EU pandemic aid for Italy is to be earmarked for digital innovation and shifting the economy to environmentally friendly technologies. In laying out his priorities to Parliament last month, Premier Mario Draghi said Italy must invest “economically, but above all, culturally,” so that young women can train for careers in sectors that will get the new investment.