Abstract
This collectively written article aims to offer a bird's eye view of the Italian debates about precarity in employment and life, as captured in discussions among participants in a focus group held in Milan in 2006. The chief topics that emerged from this discussion include the feminization of labour, feminist practices and methodologies, representation/participation, and guaranteed income. Here, we give as much space as possible to the diverse voices of participants and their strategies for transformation.
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Notes
The participants included Cristina Morini, journalist and social researcher; Andrea Fumagalli, lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Pavia and activist in the Mayday network; Cristina Tajani, doctoral student and member of the trade union movement; Tiziana Vettor, lecturer in Employment Law at the University of Milano-Bicocca and activist in the Libreria delle Donne di Milano (Women's Bookshop in Milano); Zoe, advertising copywriter and activist at Chainworkers; and Marta Bonetti, independent researcher and activist in the prec@snetwork.
There is a feminine vocation for work and not simply for precarity. Statistics tell us that, all things being equal, women are more penalized in terms of employment. In its Annual Report of March 2005, Isfol noted that female graduates are more likely to be in work (75 per cent – 5 percentage points less than men with the same academic qualifications) as are women from northern Italy. In fact, Italy presents wide regional differences: in the north, the female employment rate is over 50 per cent (peaking at around 60 per cent in Emilia Romagna), whereas in the South only 27 women out of 100 work. For those holding a diploma, the employment rate works out at around 55 per cent, with a difference of 19 points compared with men. At the lowest educational levels, the gap is accentuated, exceeding 34 per cent points. In fact, only 34 per cent of women with a middle school diploma are in work and only 19 per cent of women with an elementary education. The difference is also reflected in the gap in salaries – for women it is on average 15 per cent less with peaks of 35 per cent less for those with higher qualifications (Eurostat, Labour Force Survey). The discrimination in salaries, according to a recent report from Federmanager (National Federation of Industrial Company Managers), is one of the main reasons for the low number of women managers in Italy, where their number continues to diminish compared with that of their male colleagues. The ‘glass ceiling’, a concept used in the literature to indicate a ‘block’ to equal access for men and women to the highest rungs on the career ladder, still seems to persist.
As emphasized by Lia Cigarini in La rivoluzione inattesa, 1997, Pratiche, Milan.
Adriana Nannicini in Le parole per farlo. Donne al lavoro nel Post fordismo, 2002, Derive e Approdi, Rome. She shows how often the language of love is used to describe an experience that has nothing of the sentimental about it.
Increasingly, contracts and agreements are individual not collective. Knowing your own contract and comparing your experiences with other workers to understand differences and similarities is already a step in the right direction. It makes it possible to acquire more strength, awareness and legitimacy in entering into an individual negotiation, which sees us all as protagonists.
The quotation was an election propaganda slogan of the left-wing Democratici di Sinistra in the Parliamentary elections in April 2006.
An important experiment in this sense was that of Serpica Naro made up of precarious people (www.serpicanaro.org). Serpica Naro is an anagram of San Precario and is the name given to a dress designer invented by activists. She took part with one of her collections at press conferences and fashion shows during Milan's prestigious fashion week.
CGIL is one of the three main trade unions in Italy. For more information on the experiments in Italy, visit www.sinistriprogetti.it. For those in Lombardy, visit www.redditolombardia.org
Flexicurity refers to the definition of the politics of welfare and work (now two sides of the same coin that traditional politics stubbornly keeps separate) aimed at combining social security and flexibility (acted upon) for work. It is founded on two main objectives: the guarantee of continuity in income – direct (in the form of money) and indirect (in the form of primary services) – and the simplification of the labour market (minimum hourly rate for staff without a contract and a reduction in the types of contract). These are measures that have little or nothing to do with the academic concept of flexsecurity, a term that, in the language of the journalist, refers to policies devised by governments, often aimed at workfare politics. For more on the subject, cf. Andrea Fumagalli ‘La proposta della flexicurity’ in Corbelli, V. and Naletto, G. (2005) editors, Atlante di un'altra economia, Rome: Manifestolibri, 75–84.
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>Sconvegno (Manuela Galetto, Chiara Lasala, Sveva Magaraggia, Chiara Martucci, Elisabetta Onori, Francesca Pozzi) a snapshot of precariousness: voices, perspectives, dialogues. Fem Rev 87, 104–112 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400368
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400368