'Give us voice': Women protest Italy's male-dominated coronavirus response
According to 2018 European Union figures, 53% of Italian women were in their nation’s workforce, compared with 73% for men. Only Greece ranked lower among EU nations: 49% for women and 70% for men.Scarcity of affordable day care and men’s rejection of domestic responsibilities such as housework have been blamed for decades for Italian women’s inability or reluctance to join the workforce.
When Conte explained to the nation how Italy would gradually emerge from lockdown, “he never said the words ‘family,’ ‘children,’ ‘school’ until a journalist asked him,’’ noted Irene Fellin, a senior researcher on gender and security at the International Affairs Institute, a Rome-based think tank. Conte’s lack of focus on the childcare burden on women in the months ahead is “one of the reasons it was so important to have a woman on the commission’’ advising the government on reopening, said Dr. Paola Romagnani, a kidney specialist who signed the petition calling for women’s inclusion., middle and elementary schools as well as nursery schools have remained open during the pandemic.
“If couples have to decide who goes back to work when they reopen the offices, it will be the women who won’t go back,” since many women work part-time or are paid less than men, said Fellin, who also heads the Italian branch of Women in International Security. As to why women were snubbed for visible roles during the pandemic, Romagnani pointed to the country’s centuries-old culture that attributes authoritativeness to men. As part of this legacy, until the early 1960s, women in Italy weren’t allowed to hold top positions at public companies, she noted.Fellin agreed. “I don’t think that they think women aren’t competent. They just don’t see them,” she said.
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