In the 2024 budget law, the Meloni government has included, with great
emphasis from the Minister for Equal Opportunities Eugenia Roccella,measures to support families, female employment and the further
declining birth rate. ---- These measures mainly concern: ---- a) an
increase in the bonus for nursery school for families with an ISEE of
less than 40,000 euros, ---- b) a reduction in social security
contributions for working mothers of 3 or more children with a permanent
employment relationship. ---- With respect to the first point, it should
be highlighted that it is a measure that risks having a very limited
effect considering the scarcity of nests, and often, where they exist,
they do not have enough places.
In fact, the coverage rates of childcare services are significantly
lower in Italy compared to the European average: 26.3% against 47.2% for
the 0-3 year age group, without considering the notable territorial
disparity seen the southern regions are particularly lacking in this
respect given that the coverage of childcare services in the
Centre-North is almost double that of the South.
However, as regards the question of decontribution for working mothers,
it is a discriminatory measure because it is designed only for those
with at least 3 children (two on an experimental basis for only 2 years)
and, above all, because it concerns women employed on a permanent basis,
i.e. a category extremely minority and, in some way "privileged"
compared to the majority of women with precarious work.
In fact, according to ISTAT data, just over a third of women of
reproductive age (18-45 years) have permanent employment and of these
only 1.28% have three children.
It is clear that it is a maneuver more for effect than substance and
certainly does not affect the problem of the birth rate decline, as it
was intended to be presented.
To obtain significant results in this regard, structural interventions
would be necessary, especially with respect to the issue of job
insecurity whose levels, in our country, are much higher than in many
Central-Northern European countries, especially for women.
Furthermore, a problem not concretely addressed is the insufficient
number of nursery places, lower than that of the pre-pandemic years and
with long waiting lists, a problem which, combined with that of the
scarcity of nursery schools which provide for the exemption of fees in
relation to economic conditions of families, penalizes the most
disadvantaged families both from an economic and geographical point of view.
The nursery bonus is therefore an intervention that is based once again
on the idea that financial payments alone are a sufficient lever to
support parenting. But the most dangerous aspect that emerges from this
maneuver is a vision that considers care work, that of children and the
elderly, still almost exclusively on the shoulders of women.
It is the idea of family promoted by President Meloni and her
government, an idea that is based precisely on the non-sharing of the
care work entrusted to mothers, wives and daughters.
After all, what to expect from a government in which a member of the
prime minister's party calmly states that the highest aspiration for a
woman is to be a mother (!!!).
Or when a municipal councilor of Fratelli d'Italia in Arezzo proposes to
penalize in the nursery ranking those children who have grandmothers
under 70 without particular health problems, conveying the idea that the
nursery is not an insertion phase and socialization in the child's
development, but essentially a parking lot and that the best thing is
for the mother or, alternatively, the grandmother to take care of it.
All this in the face of all the pedagogy that identifies nursery school
as an important tool for the development of the personality of girls and
boys
All things considered, in short, the much-vaunted measures in favor of
motherhood are completely insufficient and contradictory given that they
benefit the strongest women and not the most fragile. Indeed, what is
the point of reducing contributions to permanent workers who have their
third child when the majority of women barely have one and almost always
have a precarious job?
And then what is the point of increasing the nursery school bonus when
the majority of places in these services are concentrated in the North
(where, moreover, the amount of fees is much higher than what is
foreseen by the bonus) while they are conspicuously scarce in the South
where perhaps there would be some more need to promote female employment?
In this way, the gap between the northern and southern regions with
fewer services, less work and, obviously, fewer opportunities for women
is further accentuated.
Regarding the problem of the birth rate decline, the latest ISTAT census
shows a downward demographic curve.
Suffice it to say that in 2022 only 392 thousand children were born with
a decrease of 1.7% compared to the previous year, equal to 7,000 fewer
births.
It is therefore clear that it is on this aspect that it is necessary to
intervene, but not with spot measures like those proposed by the
government, but rather with structural interventions consistent with the
objective.
But if the combination of motherhood and work continues to be
incompatible due to the socio-economic conditions that women face, it
will be difficult to reverse this trend.
Without prejudice to the fact that the choice of motherhood must still
remain a choice and the right of every woman to freely decide not to be
a mother must be fully respected without this becoming a social stigma,
in Italy the percentage of childless women has doubled, going from 10 %
for those born in the 40s to 21% for those born in the 80s and often the
absence of children is the unintentional outcome of the decision to
delay the birth for reasons almost always of an economic and work nature
Therefore, in order to bring about a change in this regard, it is
necessary, first of all, to increase stable and dignified female
employment, to reduce the wage gap and, last but not least, to put in
place concrete tools for sharing care work.
Regarding this point, it is worth underlining that paternity leave in
Italy is absolutely inadequate given that the number of days available
to fathers is only 10 days, a far cry from that expected, for example,
in Spain which is 16 weeks.
It is clear that 10 days will certainly not be able to make a difference
in terms of fully sharing family responsibilities, nor will it be able
to effectively combat discrimination when entering the world of work,
which especially affects women.
At the same time, another "gem" of this government is what is foreseen
in the budget law on the problem of non-self-sufficiency which is the
other side of the same coin, where an "extremely innovative provision
which aims to build a new welfare model" was presented which will allow
us to give concrete answers to the needs of over 14 million elderly
people, of which 3.8 are not self-sufficient" as explained by the deputy
minister of labor Maria Teresa Bellucci (FdI).
It's a shame, however, that on closer inspection the amount allocated in
the budget law will only concern an audience of just 25,000 elderly
people, therefore far from the figures advertised and above all far from
solving the problem.
Yet this provision should have put into practice the enabling law
33/2023 for the reform of care for the elderly, a particularly felt
reform considering that we are a country with an ever-increasing number
of elderly people, often with serious pathologies and not
self-sufficient, who would require quality home or residential care and
who instead, once again, are left on the shoulders of families and in
particular women.
Beyond the propaganda that is bandied about on a daily basis, especially
through the media, which are largely now completely subservient to the
executive, it is clear that this government is essentially moving with a
view to overcoming the universal welfare model, replacing it with a
family-based idea where precisely it is the family (and therefore the
woman) who has to take care of all aspects related to care, from
childhood to non-self-sufficient elderly people.
An idea which, let it be clear, was not born with this government but
has found a favorable humus in the various governments that have
followed one another and which have moved from a liberal perspective in
which the privatization processes, starting from healthcare to arrive up
to education, passing through the pension system and many other public
services, they have carried out an attack on the welfare state and the
conditions of the working class, all this accompanied by a substantially
misogynistic and patriarchal vision which, in fact, relegates women to
roles subordinate, marginal and discriminating.
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