Date: 2021
Nationality: italian
Description: Does parental choice create unemployment risks for both men and women? Is there a “motherhood” factor in women’s long-term unemployment? Do men assume unequal treatment between men and women? Do they recognize socially assigned roles by gender and how do they respond?
Two young thirty something, a woman and a man, discuss motherhood choices, the world of work and women’s autonomy. They are two young people of today, who have a university path behind them and their gaze towards the future.
Matilde cannot believe that women still have to choose between work and children: “unfortunately there is a high percentage of employers in Italy who are not correct regarding the issues of motherhood”, but there are also women as ” my cousin who has a degree in Economics, worked, had a child, stopped during pregnancy and is not planning to go back to work, because the father works a lot and then you cannot raise the child with nannies… I do not know, a thirty-year-old girl who has done her studies, graduated, then for what?”
Filippo does not see it like this: “Well, but work is not always everything. It is right to realize yourself in your career, in your work, but also in your family, having the people you love around you… I think it is even more important”. Filippo seems to give a personal emotional emphasis to a woman’s ‘choice’ not to work to take care of her children, Matilde sees it from a gendered, historical and social perspective: ‘… a woman, given the cultural and historical background we have, has to work. We get this far and then what do we do? We stay at home, by choice I decide to stay with my family at home and I never work again and I get supported by my husband? No!”