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« It is clear to everyone that a mother cannot devote herself to a job and this would be a terrible job, because Rome is in such a terrible state » said Silvio Berlusconi, leader of Forza Italia and former Prime Minister of Italy on RAI.

The Italian Republic is organized according to the principles asserted by the Italian constitution. Like in many of modern democracies, power is divided in three branches : the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches. Two chambers rule the legislative branch thus forming the Italian parliament which elects the president through an undisclosed vote. One specific thing to notice is the fact that the legislative branch rules according to what is called a perfect bicamerlism, meaning that the two chambers have strictly the same powers. Gender inequality can be defined as a « social process by which people are treated differently and disadvantageously, under similar circumstances, on the basis of gender »^[1]. Such a process can be identified under very different forms such as : lack of laws to protect the victims of domestic violence, in some countries mothers can’t pass citizenship to their children while the father can, reduced access to education and of course, professional obstacles, which this article will focus on. Obviously, gender pay gap is a phenomenon among others which is the symptom of a much broader issue as regards gender inequalities in general. It can be considered as the outcome of social climate and cultural standards that assign specific roles to each gender. For instance, the Italian actress Asia Argento recently decided to leave Italy due to the public condemn she had to endure after revealing she had been sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein. She even declared that Italy « is far behind the rest of the world in its view of women»^[2]. But gender inequalities in Italy is not a recent political topic. Laura Certa and Veronica Franco were two Italian feminists who lived during the Renaissance. The first one who was raised according to the religious principles of her times fought for equal education and the second one wrote : « We can convice men that we have hands, feet, and a heart like yours ; and although we may be delicate and soft, some men who are delicate are also strong ; and others, coarse and harsh are cowards ».

« Women are angels or demons, born to take care of the household, bear children, and to make cuckolds ». - Benito Mussolini.

Jennifer Linda Monti from the University of Syracuse studied the condition of women during the 1930’s in Italy, that is to say under fascism. She tackles the definition of Fascism given by its advocates, understood as a revolution and in that regard, she states that they experienced contrasted changes. In most domains, the condition of women did not improve under fascism but to some extent, fascism brought women in new spheres such as the public sphere. JL.Monti refers to the end of World War One in Italy and the growing desire for change that drove Italy at that time. Yet nothing changed as regards the right to vote or the right to work although women were very useful in the factories during the first world war to support the war effort.

The same phenomenon occured in France under the name of Révolution Nationale (National Revolution). Triggered by the Maréchal Pétain, the idea was to transform the French society, which required to assign a specific role to women. The three main ideas of the National Revolution were Travail, Famille, Patrie (Work, Family, Motherland) and women played a significant rôle by raising a new youth that would serve Vichy’s ambitions. Germany kept women away from work as well so that they can focus on creating the perfect Nazi family. To put it in a nutshell, Europe in the 1930’s asserted gender inequalities and work was a domain that made no exception to that.

However, J.L.Monti also specifies that woman entered in the public sphere as they were encouraged to contribute to Fascist organizations. Those were meant to re-organize the Italian society according to Mussolini’s principles. Monti points out that Fascim brought a very paradoxical freedom to Italian women. They indeed this right (which was a duty as well), which is something their mothers were never allowed to do, yet by doing so, they promoted an ideology that ensnared them into a very biological function : enabling the prosperity of the fascist youth.

Benito Mussolini said : « Women are angels or demons, born to take care of the household, bear children and to make cuckolds»^[3]. And the Catholic church strongly backed the idea of women kept at home and not working, but breeding children instead. Therefore, under fascism, the idea of women working and being paid just like men was as absurd as it was in Germany at the same time under Nazism.

A few key dates can help to understand the progress towards gender equality in Italy. A symbolic measure is the right to vote which Italian women acquired in 1946 but we can focus on earlier legislative victories as regards gender equality. Italian universities started to enroll women in 1876, that is to say, just a year after Denmark and six years after Sweden. Low skilled civil servant jobs are accessible to women as soon as 1919 and, on the same year, Italian married women can manage their assets. As a comparison, Austrian women got that right in 1811 and Bolivia only granted that right to married women in 1972^[4].

More rencently, the Italian legislative branch decided to strengthen its laws meant to protect women from violence^[5]. Starting from 2013 whether it is domestic violence, online bullying or a motive for humanitarian immigration, the measures increased the sentences applied to the authors of such acts whenever possible. But the issue is also tackled from the point of view of the victim. For instance, according to Lizzy Davies, a columnist for the Guardian, «reports of domestic abuse will no longer be able to be revoked by the complainant »^[6].

But in a general way, the Italian constitution does assert gender equality as a right. Indeed, the third article guarantees equality to all Italian citizens and that skin color, religion, sex, langage etc. cannot alter the right to equal treatment^[7].

• The 37th article indeed states that « Working women have the same rights and are entitled to equal pay for equal work. Working conditions must allow women to fulfill their essential rôle in the family and ensure specific appropriate protection for the mother and child^[8].

• The 51st article asserts equal eligibility for work : All citizens of either sex are eligible for public offices and for elective positions on equal terms, according to the conditions established by law. To this end, the Republic shall adopt specific measures to promote equal opportunities between women and men^[9].

• Similarly, the 117th article states that : Regional laws shall remove any hindrances to the full equality of men and women in social, cultural and economic life and promote equal access to elected offices for men and women^[10].

Although the constitution states that all citizens should be treated equally at work, the reality displays a huge gap between what the law prescribes and the every-day life of many Italian women. A few figures can help illustrate this statement. 10.72 % of the masculine active population is unemployed while this figures rises up to 12.67 % when it comes to active women and that rate is even more striking given that only 11.54 % of the whole Italian active population was unemployed in 2016. Also, women are noticeably under-represented among the overall active population since they only represent 42.06 % of the Italian active workforce in 2016^[11]. An Italian also newspaper also warned that women earn 7.3 % less than men on average. They are also barely hired for high skilled job. Very few Italian working women are managers for instance : only 28 % of the managers in Italy are women. And the stability of work is also an issue to be tackled since 31.8 % of women work part time while this is the case for only 7.4 % of men^[12].

Simona Cuomo an Expert Fellow in the Department Management at the University Bocconi wrote an article in which she states that « the feminization of labor markets is one of the deepest social transformations having emerged from the second half of the Twentieth century »^[13]. As we pointed out, women face difficulties getting hired for high-skilled jobs. Simona Cuomo mentions data reported by Consob^[14] that relates the lack of women in the boards of directors of companies in Italy. According to Eurostat, Italian women also work less than men in terms of hours every week. In 2008, it was reported that an Italian women worked 33.6 hours per week on average while men 41.3 hours per week on average. Yet it changes if we focus on part-time jobs in which women are a majority. A woman employed part-time will usually work 21.4 hours per week on average and a man will work 21.2 hours per week on average when employed part time. The gap is also slightly reduced when it comes to full time jobs : a woman employed full time will work 38.3 hours a week on average while a man will work around 42.4 hours a week. Such a gap in the total time can be explained by the fact that, on average, men work full time and women work part time.

What we commonly call gender pay gap refers to gender inequalities in the domain of work. It is often to as the difference between the amounts of money paid to women and men, often for doing the same work^[15]. And as far as Italy is concerned, this goals has not been reached yet. Far from being the european black sheep in that regard, Italy can still improve womens’ working condition to match those granted to men as this country ranks 50th according to a report from the World Economic Forum^[16] on global gender gap. Italy indeeds does slightly better than Kazakhstan which ranks 51st in that regard. The United States rank 45th, Germany ranks 13th while the top ranks are held by Scandinavian countries : Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Italy’s score in gender gap is 0.719 while Iceland’s is the highest with 0.874 point.

One of the factors which could explain such discrepancies is perhaps the unionization of women in Italy. Three unions represent the Italian workforce : The CISL, the UIL and the CGIL. The Conferazione Italiana Sindicati Lavoratori (CISL) was founded in 1950 and currently gathers around 4.5 millions unionists^[17]. It is the second most important union in Italy and 45 % of its members are women^[18]. Around the same trend can be noticed among the members of the Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL), 50 % of its members are women^[19]. This far-left union counts around 5.6 millions unionists and was founded in 1944^[20]. However only 18 % of the members of the Unione Italiana del Lavoro, are women^[21] while this union gathers more than 2 million unionists. According to the same source, the UIL is the union that with the lowest rate of female unionists^[22].

So men and women seem to be equally represented among the two largest italian unions. However, the situation changes when it comes to the percentage of women within the delegation of these unions in the parliament. Women are indeed under-represented. The CISL delegation only counts 31 % of women and it is barely better as regards the CGIL delegation since it only counts 40 % of women. And when it comes to the UIL, only 20 % of the members of this union’s delegation in the parliament are women^[23]. Therefore the working conditions of women in Italy can be explained by an under-representation of their interests by the unions in the Italian Parliament : among the 1276 Italian unionists in the three delegations mentionned above, only 400 of them are women^[24]. But what is even more striking is the number of women senators or representatives. In 2013, only 31 % of the members of the Italian Parliament were women^[25].