It is comforting that the issue of women at work is back in the foreground of public debate, and not only on the occasion of 8 March. We needed the pandemic, we needed the 93 unemployed female workers in 2020, the exhausted efforts of the cloister, of the opening and closing of the schools, almost all on the shoulders of working mothers. In short, we needed the emergency that awakens sleepers, perhaps for a moment and without practical consequences. Consolation, debate and awakening, however, do not resolve a crumb of female discomfort, tempered only by a bouquet of mimosas, a few words of circumstance, and a myriad of good intentions. And above all they do not help in the implementation of true and full gender equality.
The Italian gender gap stands at 18 points (European average 10). The path towards equality has been at a standstill for years, entangled between ineffective women's quotas, torpid equal opportunities commissions and battles over language, while for years repeats the litany of our negative primates: less than one Italian out of two has a paid job (but many work at home and illegally); the negative demographic balance (1,27 children per woman); nursery schools (a quarter of the needs); wage differences (almost a quarter less), asymmetry in family care (with a greater burden for women).
The awakening on the women's question it does not necessarily touch parity. Two cultures confront each other in this field: that of protection and that of freedom of choice. The first has its roots in article 37 of the Constitution, first paragraph («Working women have the same rights and, for equal work, the same wages as workers. Working conditions must allow for the fulfillment of her essential family function and ensure the mother and the child an adequate special protection") which, implicitly, declares the father inessential.
The second culture, that of freedom of choice, has never had and still does not have a strong following, because it involves long-term action, of a cultural rather than a political nature, and requires costly reforms. It is easier to enact a law, for example, on the tax exemption of female recruitment or on women's quotas, than to convince employers not to implement any discrimination either on recruitment or on day-to-day treatment (young girls today complain a mobbing that is almost impossible to prove, a constant discrimination in promotions and salaries, equally difficult to fight).
At the end of the XNUMXs, la Rinascente no longer applied the "bachelorette clause", the mechanism which provided for the automatic dismissal of the worker in the event of marriage. The company was culturally oriented towards innovation and pragmatism: it was not convenient to form and train the young girls to work as a saleswoman and then lose them, if married, and start over. Only years later was the "bachelorette clause" prohibited by law, thanks to the numerous lawsuits brought by the dismissed women in the name of the Constitution. How many Italian companies are there today that implement full equality? A handful, often founded and run by women.
The fact is that the rockiest obstacle to equality in Italy are Italian men and women. It begins with "greetings and sons", passing through clothing or gender toys (the train for the boy, the doll for the girl), to arrive in adolescence, when the girls clear the table while the boys sit and watch. Little girls are still taught modesty, fear, reserve; to children audacity, strength, competition; boys are served and revered by toxic mothers who loom over their daughters at the sound of the warning that the important thing is to find a husband.
The result is that millions of adults believe that female work is an accessory such as a designer bag or a 12 heel; believe that only the husband has the right to decide on separation or divorce (lo jus corrigendi, beating his wife and children, has been prohibited since 1956); that certain trades and professions are not suitable for a woman; That the "essential family function" of women of Article 37 is an absolute and immortal truth and not a political compromise dating back to 1947. It is no exaggeration to say that a multitude of male employers, bosses and bosses live in a bubble, convinced of their superiority, that society he does not question with the necessary vigor.
And yet girls study, graduate, graduate. With the courage that few mothers have taught them, they venture into the world, as capable of handling the algorithm as the iron (and therefore in a condition of clear superiority over certain husbands). They are increasingly venturing into STEM studies (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) (40% of 2018 graduates). Many of these young women then run into the most archaic dilemmas: job or child? stay or emigrate? rebel or bite the bullet?
Multiplying nursery schools is not enough, just as a handful of laws and a handful of billions of Next Generation EU will not be enough. After thirty years of family and school inertia, of bombardments of sexist advertising, of consumerist indifference, it would be useful to change course. Equality is not a female claim against males or, worse, a whim of a few feminists; it is a principle of civilization, as well as an economic necessity (by 2025, says the Monetary Fund, gender equality would produce a 35% increase in world GDP). As a principle of civilization, everyone, men and women, should fight together to implement it.
Ma Italy is the realm of corporations and the men's guild fears losing power while the females' guild persists in accepting the rules of guardianship: when the so-called "femicide" is faced - which is nothing more than a murder, not a separate category - one rightly mourns the victims but unjustly the cultural and moral poverty of violent males is not underlined, and perhaps it would be appropriate to take it into consideration as an element of inferiority, of subordination to prejudice, rather than worrying whether it should be said "ministra" or "carpenter".
Sure, it's complicated, equality is an age-old battle. Now, encouraged by the Next Generation EU, stimulated by its billions, we could resume the path interrupted by the fatuity of the 37s, by the economic crises that brought forth other emergencies (as if equality weren't an urgency but a whim), yet it doesn't no cultural and planning clarity on the horizon, not a long-term vision. Nurseries will be welcome but they do not facilitate equality, at least until the "essential function" of men in the family and the equally "essential function" of women in fairly paid work are not asserted. Since it has a great symbolic value, a modification of the first paragraph of article XNUMX would also be desirable and welcome.
