The unequal pandemic. Working women, welfare states and policy responses to Covid-19 in Italy

Due to the nature of the health emergency and the respective containment measures, working women have been particularly exposed to the first waves of Covid-19. To understand the pandemic’s gendered impact in the Italian labour market, the article focuses on the relation between gender and welfare through the ‘incomplete revolution’ theoretical framework. The aim is to explore whether, among the policies implemented in Italy to cope with the socio-economic consequences of Covid-19, some targeted measures to support women have been introduced. The analysis shows that the public action did not take into account the pre-existing gender inequalities in the labour market and the unequal burden of care responsibilities between women and men, which represent an unpaid extra work that has been amplified by multiple lockdowns and has exacerbated women’s challenges in the labour market. A comparative outlook on emergency measures in Europe demonstrates that the policy response to Covid-19 tends to reproduce the existing institutional and welfare legacies. In Italy, this path-dependency has inhibited welfare measures rethinking in favour of greater gender equality and did not allow the pandemic crisis to be a turning point at which to begin healing the gender fracture.