What causes such a High for Migrant Domestic Workers in Italy
Whilst analysing the migration history of these women it is important to look at the gender politics of Italy at that time. During the 1970s vociferous feminist movements from America and France were influencing Italian women to enter new political and social spheres and reject the familial role of housewife and mother. Until the late 1960s an Italian woman's main identity was within the family, an institution which has held great importance throughout Italian history. This feminist movement, which was visibly affecting women, not only tested the position of Catholicism, but also the norms concerning women's place within society. Italian women gained new aspirations to join the labour market and numbers of working women between 1970 and 1985 increased by 50%, while by 1985 around 60% of married women at child bearing age were employed.[1] The Catholic stance on women had not changed since 1945 when Pius XII gave an important speech insisting that women's destiny was motherhood, claiming women who did go out to work become dazed by the chaotic world in which they live, blinded by the tinsel of false glamour and greedy sinister pleasures. [2]
Women therefore needed to find a way of achieving the emancipation which was flooding the country without undermining the hegemonic Catholic traditions deeply rooted within their culture and so a demand pull was created for domestic workers. A demand pull is described as an increase or upward trend in spendable money that tends to result in increased competition for available goods and services[3], the implication in this context being that Italian families were increasing their income and thus strengthening the demand for the services provided by domestic workers. This emancipation was interlinked very closely with the changing demographics which, over the last 30 years, have demonstrated a constantly aging population. According to ISTAT, in 1996 people over the age of 65 represented 17% of the population and by 2006 this had risen to 20%.[4] As Cole and Booth mention, the Italian state promises more but delivers little in the way of social services.[5] Unlike Britain, Italy cannot rely on nursing homes to care for their elderly as Italy possesses the lowest number of nursing homes per capita in Europe.[6] This could be due to the strong traditional, familial role that Italian women have, so a need for nursing homes was never created. The combination of these two factors has caused Italian women to depend on migrant domestic servants for help. Currently there are 2.938.922 immigrants in Italy of whom nearly 50% are women[7] and 619,000 of whom are registered domestic workers[8], a figure that is higher than in any other European country.[9]
[1] Martin Clark, Modern Italy 1871-1995 second ed. (London: Addison Wesley Longman Limited, 1996), p. 400.
[2] Lesley Caldwell, Italian Family Matters: Women, Politics and Legal Reform (London: Macmillan Academic and Professional LTD, 1991), p. 22.
[3] Merriam Webster online dictionary. http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/demand-pull. Last Consulted 09/05/2008
[4] Istituto Nazionale di statistica, Indicatori demografici Anno 2006 (Rome: ISTAT, 2006), p. 1. Available Online: http://www.istat.it/salastampa/comunicati/non_calendario/20070326_00/indicatoridemografici2006.pdf. Last Consulted 09/05/2008
[5] Jeffrey E. Cole and Sally S. Booth, Dirty Work: Immigrants in Domestic Service, Agriculture and Prostitution in Sicily (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2007), p. 35.
[6] Pier Ugo Carbonin, Roberto Bernabei, Giuseppe Zuccala and Giovanni Gambassi, 'Health-Care for Older persons, country profile: Italy' in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 45, no 12 (1997), pp. 1520-21.
[7] Istituto Nazionale di statistica, La Popolazione Staniera residente in Italia al 1 gennaio 2007 (ISTAT:Rome, 2007), p. 1. Available Online: http://www.istat.it/salastampa/comunicati/non_calendario/20071002_00/ Last Consulted 09/05/2008
[8] Daniela Mesini, Sergio Pasquinelli, Giselda Rusmini for Istituto per la Ricerca Sociale, Il Lavoro privato di cura in Lombardia; caratteristiche e tendenza in materiail di qualificazione e regolarizzazione, (Istituto per la Ricerca Sociale: Milan, 2006), p. 1.
[9] Janet Henshall Momsen, Gender, Migration and Domestic Service (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 7.
