Segmented labour markets and female labour force heterogeneity: unexpected outcomes in times of crisis

The outline of the paper is as follows. In the first one we briefly discuss the heterogeneity of women’s preferences and we present the data on female attitudes in the Northern and Southern Italy as far as gender-family roles are concerned, using the EVS 2010. By this way we set the background to understanding the empirical analysis on female labour market behaviours in the two Italian macro-regions. We will see that gender-family attitudes, despite some differences in the two macro-areas, are rather homogeneous throughout the country. Though, employment and unemployment rates are largely different in the two macro-areas stressing that mainly in the South there is a large group of women available to be mobilized for entering the labour market. In the second part we construct a typology of women profiles based on the concrete behaviours within the labour market, and we will discuss it in relation to attitudes data. The typology will show interesting and unexpected outcomes compared to the international literature as far as the features of the women profiles. We will show that a mismatch is present between behaviours and attitudes. In the third part, we will present how the crisis has differently hit the different women profiles, using the Italian Labour force survey data, and its longitudinal component.