Intesa Sanpaolo takes the field once again to support the categories most affected by the Covid emergency. Among these there are certainly women, in particular working mothers who, as we have seen, find it difficult – in general, and particularly in this phase – to reconcile professional activity with childcare. For this, a specific loan arrives, on favorable terms: it's called “mom@work” and allows young working mothers to have financial support to reconcile family and professional life in the first years of their children's lives. Active since July 24, it is destined to all women who have been working for at least six months, reside in Italy and have children aged up to 36 months.
The CEO of Intesa Sanpaolo, Carlo Messina, was keen to personally intervene on this latest initiative, commenting it as follows: "Over 37 working mothers resigned in 2019, indicating among the reasons the difficulty of reconciling work with child care needs. This trend is constantly growing and further worsens Italy's negative record in female employment and consequently in GDP. Facilitating access to credit for this category of citizens means triggering one of the necessary steps for the modernization of the country, a commitment that we feel very strongly at Intesa Sanpaolo. For a young mother, continuing to work means contribute to the family income, become independent, cultivate one's rightful ambitions. As with university students, we focus on those in society who have the most potential and we do so with cutting-edge tools in terms of sustainability".
The money can be freely used, for example to pay for daycare fees or the babysitter. The loan is disbursed in slice half-yearly up to 30.000 euros, up to the child's 6th birthday, when, as Istat points out, the period of greatest economic crisis for a family ends. It is obtained without any guarantee, by presenting the documentation of any work in progress at the branch. The reimbursement of the sums used can take place over a period of up to 20 years. In the event of loss of employment for any reason, the credit line continues to be disbursed for six months if only the mother self-certifies her willingness to look for a new one. In the following semester, if the required maintenance requirements are not met but the will to look for a new job is still declared, disbursements are suspended but the credit line is left alive until expiry.
According to Ipsos research, 37% of women aged between 25 and 49 with at least one child are inactive, a percentage that rises as the number of children increases, reaching up to 52,5% for women with three or more children. Furthermore, from the data recently published by the Labor Inspectorate, it emerges that more than 37.000 new mothers quit during 2019 (+4,5% on 2018), indicating among the reasons the difficulty of "reconciling work with the care needs of the offspring”, especially when there are no grandparents and other relatives to support or the cost for the nursery school or a babysitter is judged too high. But the statistics do not reveal the number, at least double, of women who give up maternity leave to stay in work.
