The paper provides a descriptive analysis of the labour market condition of Italian women and of the main policies aimed at helping parents - and especially mothers - to achieve a satisfactory work-family balance. We focus on those policies more widely adopted in developed countries, i.e. the parental leave and child care systems, whose inadequacy is often cited as an explanation for the low female labour supply in Italy. We conclude by drawing some policy recommendations.
Based on the features of the existing public policies aimed at helping parents to reconcile work and family responsibilities and on the international empirical evidence, we conclude that there is scope to foster quality child care support to further improve female labour supply in Italy. Moreover, increasing the length of paternity leave, which is currently only five days, may help to rebalance the domestic workload between genders and overcome stereotypes.
Published in 2019 in: Economia Italiana, Gender gaps in Italy and the role of public policy, v. 2019, 3, pp. 37-62
