Women's Working Conditions and Job Precariousness in Historical Perspective. The Case of Italian Industry during the Economic Boom (1958-1963)

This chapter uses the concept of “precariousness” to take a look at women’s working conditions in Italian industry over the crucial years of the economic boom (1958-1963), when the agricultural base of the Italian national economy was replaced by an industrial one. The present research is part of a larger research project that studies the way in which, in the various areas of industrial production and economic development in Italy over the last sixty years, female labour has been employed on different and nearly always inferior terms to male labour, whether quantitatively or qualitatively. In most cases pay scales have been lower, periods of qualification and dequalification more unfavourable, and contract terms generally less secure than for male workers. The combination of these aspects of women’s paid work has resulted in what will be called job precariousness. Job precariousness is adopted as a paradigm for an in-depth analysis of women’s working conditions. As many historians of women’s paid work have argued, women (like immigrants) have always experienced considerably worse working conditions than men throughout the capitalist industrial age. Even in the Golden Age of the 20th century (1945-1975), considered by most sociologists and economists “the era of job stability”, women’s working conditions were worse than men’s and can be defined precarious. Women in Italian industry form no exception. The chapter will show how many women’s jobs in Italian industry were the opposite of stable and therefore can be called precarious in the period of 1950s and 1960s, when the Italian economy experienced the most intense economic and industrial growth of the 20th century. (us in analyzing the so-called years of the economic boom (1958-1963), this chapter will focus on forms of job precariousness commonly found in that age. The comparison between female and male work conditions will address several aspects related to job precariousness: duration and continuity of work, salary variability, forms of discrimination and the relation between contract and social rights. In addition, attention will be paid to the forms of contract, gender-specific forms of discrimination and material working conditions of women. In using the concept of job precarious to look at women’s work in the past, I connect contemporary policy debates on job quality as conducted in the EU to historical research on women’s work. It will be argued that the concept of job precariousness should be broader than just job duration, wages and social rights. In order to make this point I use various sources: statistical material, reports from parliamentary commissions, union inquiries, women’s memoirs, to quote just some.