Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-54qdv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-10T00:56:17.876Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gender and Precarious Labor in a Historical Perspective: Italian Women and Precarious Work between Fordism and Post-Fordism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2016

Eloisa Betti
Eloisa Betti*
Affiliation:
University of Bologna
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article investigates the historical relationship between gender and precarious labor by analyzing the case study of Italian women in the second half of the twentieth century. A gendered historical approach shows that different production modes and working conditions were simultaneously present in Fordist and post-Fordist societies, and women, as well as migrants, experienced a significant level of precariousness even in the so-called golden age of the twentieth century. Sexual division of labor and sex-based discrimination seem to lie at the very heart of the gendered nature of precarious work, a long dureé nexus that has characterized industrial and postindustrial societies, as the article shows, in regard to the Italian case. By approaching the question of job precariousness as a multifaceted phenomenon, it is claimed that the subsequent spread of precarious work in the second half of the twentieth century was directly affected by labor and women's movement struggles, on the one hand, and by the role of the state and politics in defining and redefining the labor law relationship, on the other.

Information

Type
Precarious Labor in Global Perspectives
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 89: Precarious Labor in Global Perspectives , Spring 2016 , pp. 64 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2016 

Introduction

The thesis driving this article is that precarious work is an historical phenomenon that has characterized the whole history of industrial capitalism including, albeit not limited to, the past thirty years. Thus, the idea advocated by many social scientists who argue that precarious work is a new phenomenon, a distinguishing feature of postindustrial society beginning from the late 1980s after the breakdown of Fordism, will be deconstructed. By analyzing instances of job precariousness in the past six decades, some doubts will be cast over the rigid classical view of Fordism and post-Fordism, which represents these two periods as being in opposition to each other—the former characterized by job stability and the latter by job flexibility and precariousness.Footnote 1

Even if a longer history of precarity can be traced, as recently suggested by Marcel Van der Linden,Footnote 2 this research is mainly framed within the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century industrial capitalism when gender models in Western countries were clearly defined as belonging to opposite spheresFootnote 3 —that is, home and work—directly influencing the sexual division of labor and the degree of stability of both female and male workers. The rise of the male breadwinner as a normative modelFootnote 4 and its spread throughout the twentieth century is particularly relevant to the present analysis, which aims to question the gender-neutral socioeconomic analysisFootnote 5 of the Fordist system.

By looking at the evolution of Italian female working conditions since the mid-twentieth century specific attention will be paid both to changes and continuity in order to recognize and better analyze enduring forms of job precariousness (i.e., piecework, fixed-term contracts and homeworking) as well as gendered precarity traps, like the precarity-maternity nexus, which has continuously hampered women's work-life balance in the period analyzed. In the Italian case, a gendered approach has revealed that different production modes and working conditions were simultaneously present in both Fordism and post-Fordism,Footnote 6 and women, as well as migrants, experienced a significant level of precariousness even in the so-called golden age of the twentieth century.Footnote 7 Sexual division of laborFootnote 8 and sex-based discrimination (e.g., maternity leave) appear to lie at the heart of the gendered nature of precarious work, which has characterized working conditions in industrial and postindustrial societies.

Addressing the intersectionality of gender, class, race, and citizenshipFootnote 9 helps us to better understand changes and continuities in the spread of job precariousness occurring in Italy since the 1950s. Migration and citizenship status have continuously shaped precarious working conditions in a gendered way both in industrial and postindustrial Italian societies, quite often leading to forms of racism similar to that directed against Italians who migrated from the South to the North of the country in the 1950s and 1960s and against global migrants since the 1990s. The intersection between gender and class is crucial toward unveiling how Italian women from the working and the middle class have been always more precarious than men of the same, and at times even lower, social background. This reveals the highly gendered structure of both the formal and informal Italian labor market as well as persistent forms of social and cultural discrimination affecting Italian women.

The definition of precarious work and job precarity/precariousness is not self-evident. Applying these concepts to the historical field implies questioning the language and comparing it with the definition of the phenomenon provided by both historical actors and scholars in the different disciplines.Footnote 10 Socioeconomic and legal sciences had started to make an attempt to define precarious work in the 1970s, while historians have only recently begun to consider precarious work as a phenomenon pertaining to the historical fieldFootnote 11 even though analogous concepts—such as unstable and casual work—had also been used previously by social historians.

In attempting to better understand its historical meaning, a working definition of job precariousness has been adopted,Footnote 12 according to which the phenomenon is linked to three main aspects: (1) the whole system of the labor relationship existing in a specific time and place, (2) the social perception of job precariousness, and (3) male and female workers’ self-perception. At the analytical level, adopting the category of job precariousness allows us to stress the fluidity and interdependence existing in the labor relationship, since precariousness cannot be defined as a labor relationshipFootnote 13 as such but can be viewed as a “condition” in which female or male workers can be trapped as a consequence of both subjective and objective factors.

From an objective point of view, job precariousness seems to be linked to three main aspects: wage stability, job length and continuity, and the relationship between the labor contract and social/labor rights. From a subjective point of view, precariousness should be viewed in a relative manner and refer to the condition of the so-called stable workers, their self-perception, and social perception.

The first part of the article outlines the academic debate on job precariousness, which has developed in the Italian socioeconomic and historical sciences over the past decades. The core of the article analyzes the case study of Italian women and precarious work in the second half of twentieth century up to the early twenty-first century. This sheds light upon the complex relationship between precarious work and Fordism, by analyzing women's working conditions in the 1950s and 1960s Italian labor market. After that, it addresses the turning point of the 1970s, a decade when Italian women not only achieved employment stability, but precarious work also began to spread once more. Finally, the new spread of precarious work in the Italian labor market over the last thirty years and its gendered nature are addressed. The conclusion suggests a new approach aimed at historicizing precarious work, by proposing two main pillars: gender as a constant feature of precarious work and the global dimension as a main challenge in the twenty-first century.

The Italian Academic Debate on Job Precariousness from a Comparative Perspective: An Overview

The Italian academic debate on job precariousness has followed different paths and chronology in the historiography and socioeconomic sciences, and, until recently, no relevant connection had occurred between the two fields of studies. Since the late 1970s, a growing number of labor historians in Italy have adopted the concept of “instability” and “casual labor” to analyze working-class formation between the nineteenth and twentieth centuriesFootnote 14 and the multiple forms of work and typologies of workers, among them women.Footnote 15 Studies on company archives and staff registers (libri matricola)Footnote 16 question the alleged stability of the working classes in the first half of the twentieth century, revealing that high levels of turnover were also common in the largest industries.Footnote 17

Moreover, the studies on the role of women in the formation of the working class performed since 1970s at the international level by scholars like Joan W. Scott, Louise Tilly, and Michelle PerrotFootnote 18 and in Italy by Andreina De Clementi, Simonetta Ortaggi Cammarosano, Marina Cattaruzza, and Alessandra PescaroloFootnote 19 represent important points of reference to retrace the resurgence of highly gendered forms of precarious work. More recently, some historical studiesFootnote 20 have applied the concept of precarious work as such to analyze the evolution of the working conditions in local contexts featuring a high rate of female employment. Nevertheless, few historians have examined the historical roots of the newly spreading job precariousness, the privileged subject of social science analyzes.

Italian socioeconomic sciences are an interesting case study within the international debate on job precariousness, which arose on the back of the impact of Gerry and Janine Rogers’ 1980s study.Footnote 21 Some studies investigating precarious work as such (lavoro precario) appeared in Italy starting from the early 1960s, thanks to the Italian economist Paolo Sylos Labini.Footnote 22 In his 1970s book, precarious work is related, on the one hand, to the issue of development and to the ongoing debate on the dualistic Italian economic structure,Footnote 23 and, on the other, to the Marxian concept of lumpenproletariat since “all the lumpenproletarian were precariously employed.”Footnote 24 Again in the 1970s, other Italian sociologists defined a special category of workers as being precarious, the so-called marginal workers: immigrants, women and youths working in small factories and experiencing worse working conditions and fewer rights.Footnote 25

International studies on precarious labor in the 1980s are few, and most of them address the downsides of managerial flexibility instead of job precariousness, with the exception of the French case where the concept of precariousness (precarité) has been conceptualized ever since the late 1970s.Footnote 26 In the Italian context, no relevant studies followed until the early 1990s, when the sociologist Francesco Garibaldo realized a comparative study on the effects of the flexible agreements in the Italian and European labor markets by again resorting to the concept of “marginal workers.”Footnote 27

In the 1990s, the Italian debate on precarious work was highly polarized. Most economists still addressed flexibility as an opportunity and a necessity in order to create new employmentFootnote 28 while an increasing number of sociologists started underlining the relationship existing between flexibility and job precariousness.Footnote 29 Along with Richard Sennet, Ulrich Beck, Pierre Bordieau, Alain Supiot,Footnote 30 all translated into Italian, the most influential scholar was the sociologist Luciano Gallino,Footnote 31 who introduced the notion of the “human cost of flexibility,” the basis for further research on the issue.

Since the early 2000s, the academic debate on job precariousness has burst onto the scene in Italy,Footnote 32 involving a larger number of scholars in the socioeconomic sciences and humanities.Footnote 33 The relationship between precarious work, flexibility, and labor lawFootnote 34 has been a key aspect of the Italian debate along with the impact of globalization on job precariousness,Footnote 35 the relationship between social rights, welfare, and precarious work (including the flexicurity debate),Footnote 36 the impact of job precariousness at social level, and the relationship between precarious work and gender.

The latter has received growing attention since the mid-2000s, even though in Italy the gender impact of “nonstandard” contracts had been addressed since the 1990s. Along with the books by Fudge and OwensFootnote 37 and Leah F. Vosko,Footnote 38 in Italy studies by Laura Fantone,Footnote 39 collections of essays by legal experts, economists, and sociologistsFootnote 40 as well as empirical research have analyzed the gender-precariousness nexus.

In the past decade, some attempts to intersect socioeconomic and historical research have been realized in Italy as well as at the international level. A collection of essays by labor historian Ignazio MasulliFootnote 41 deals with the relationship between precarious work and precarious society, framing the analysis of job precariousness as one of the most important social consequences of the 1970s crisis. Moreover, the special issue of Genesis Footnote 42 analyzes flexible and precarious women in the long run, thanks to the contribution of both historians and social scientists. More recently, Marcel Van der Linden's and Jan Breman's articleFootnote 43 has contributed to the periodization of precarious work in a global perspective by questioning the “Standard Employment Relationship,” inherited from the golden age as the norm of capitalism and by stressing the turning point of 1970s/1980s for the massive spread of job precariousness in the twenty-first century.

Women, Precarious Work and Fordism: the Italian Way

In the 1950–1970 period, Italian women's working conditions seem precarious from many points of view. From a gender perspective, the paradigm of Fordism as the “age of stability” reflects a male employment model, that of the so-called male breadwinner,Footnote 44 not including the multiple forms of work performed by women and their various working conditions.Footnote 45 In the Italian case, such interpretations have generally overestimated the pervasiveness of the Fordist system without taking into account the diversification of the national industrial system, mostly made up of medium-small companies.Footnote 46

The concept of “job precariousness” was hardly used as such in the Italian sources of the 1950s and 1960s, as it had not been yet the subject of a true and proper conceptualization, hence the infrequent use of the terms “precarious” (precario/precaria) and “precariousness/precarity” (precarietà). The contemporary sources tended to underline the level of exploitation and discrimination as well as working life instability characterizing, for instance, the fixed-term contract. In that sense, an exception is represented by the sources produced by female trade unionists, politicians, journalists, and women's associations in which, alongside the “instability” at times the concept of “precariousness” is explicitly mentioned referring both to working conditions and to women's lives.

Moreover, in those years, there was no conception of working stability, in opposition to which the concept of precariousness could be articulated. Until the 1970s, female work was considered to be intrinsically unstable by entrepreneurs, politicians, and economists,Footnote 47 owing to a supposed attitude on the part of women who were believed to attach priority to family chores as opposed to work. This belief was particularly hard to eradicate, as it actually corresponded to the role that society itself attached to women: the primary one of wife and mother also underscored in the 1948 Italian Constitution.Footnote 48

Thus, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Italian women workers, both in the factories and on the farms, embraced a “classification struggle”Footnote 49 to have their status as workers recognized and become entitled to welfare services and social citizenship rights, addressing the issue of work-life balance before the rise of second-wave feminists.Footnote 50 The struggle was particularly harsh for the most precarious female workers, such as farmwomen and industrial homeworkers, whose work was not considered a proper job because it was not fully regulated by labor law. In postwar Italy thousands of women workers were not actually registered as such in census data because they did not fit in the male-oriented definition of full-time worker adopted by official statistics.Footnote 51 The struggle concerning classification was interwoven with a fight against job precariousness, to establish a set of legal regulations able to reduce the highly contingent nature of women's work, which was a consequence of several factors, including labor market dynamics.

Job precariousness can be better understood by considering female employment trends in the years 1951–1971 when a massive decline in the female activity rate occurred during the transition of the Italian economy from agricultural to industrial dominance.Footnote 52 Women in Italy did not benefit in the same way from the economic boom as men did, and they did not experience full employment, while only young, unmarried, and childless women entered the factories almost on a par with their male colleagues.Footnote 53 The exodus from the land, on a macroscopic scale from the late 1950s onward, left its mark on more than a million adult women workers who lost or quit their jobs and vanished from the labor market according to the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), which classified them mainly as housewives in census data. However, in further research ISTAT itself found that up to one million housewives may have been engaged in casual and part-time jobs in those years,Footnote 54 mainly being part of the so-called informal economy (i.e., care services, industrial homework) massively characterized by precarious work.

If we consider female migrant workers, who emigrated from southern Italian regions to the industrialized northern Italian cities, this was particularly true. What has emerged from empirical research based on oral history is that many of those women, especially the married ones, were unable to find regular jobs and were trapped within informal and precarious work, due to the difficulty of balancing their work and care responsibilities and the recruitment procedure, which tended to privilege both migrant men and native women.Footnote 55

During the Italian economic boom (1958–1963), various forms of work that might be called precarious involved Italian women workers also in the industrial sector: fixed-term contracts, piecework, and unregulated dismissals gave women workers no continuity of tenure, nor a fixed minimum wage; in the worst cases such women were deprived of any form of security or protection since they could lose their job at any moment.Footnote 56 Forms of additional discrimination, such as dismissals due to marriage, contributed to increase women's level of job precariousness as testified by the decrease in adult women in Italian factories in the 1960s.Footnote 57

As the 1950 Parliamentary Commission into workers’ conditions pointed out, the fixed-term contract was not being used mainly for reasons of organization, as happened, for instance, with seasonal work, extraordinary situations, or the replacement of absent staff. It was being used chiefly “to get round contractual or legal obligations” and to increase worker subordination, in particular to fire workers in case of illness or accident, to discriminate against workers politically or union wise, as well as to evade contractual obligations connected with apprenticeship, seniority, or for firing women workers freely. In that case, fixed-term was a legal alternative to dismissals for marriage, which usually took place thanks to so-called “spinsterhood clauses.”Footnote 58

The latter required a woman to quit her job if she got married. They were generally imposed on a woman when she was hired: she would have to sign her resignation notice in advance. This all impacted on the female worker who would be forced to choose between getting married or keeping her job, precisely at a time when women's economic contribution to the family was most needed. In the early boom years, the increased incidence of such “spinsterhood clauses” was being countered by formal complaints from workers, women's associations as well as by union disputes and full-scale parliamentary initiatives,Footnote 59 so fixed-term contracts were often preferred.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the most precarious form of work, defined as such also by contemporary sources, was industrial homework such as sewing. Such women usually had no proper contract with the firm employing them, and, as a consequence, they had no tenure or wage stability and no cover if they got sick or pregnant or if work diminished or ceased altogether. Industrial homeworkers in the Fordist period were paid entirely according to how much they produced—that is, piecework—and not by the hours they worked. Industrial homework has always been highly gendered, and in the boom years it was almost exclusively “women's work.” According to some estimates, there were between six hundred thousand and seven hundred thousand people working from home in Italy in the early 1960s, of a total of five million women workers.Footnote 60

Piecework was a widespread practice of payment not only for industrial homeworkers, but also for Italian factory workers of the 1950s and 1960s, having a considerable bearing on their pay packet. A worker hired on a regular contract usually earned a minimum wage for a certain number of working hours, and an extra wage calculated on a piecework basis according to productivity. Generally a minimum quota to be reached was set, below which no extra pay could be claimed. The poor wages earned by a female factory worker would drive her to step up the pace to the point of exhaustion in order to reach the target and take home the bonus on her pay packet. The bonuses for the piecework scheme might be worked out differently for men and women (piecework differentials), extending the pay disparity between genders.Footnote 61

Under the pressure from women's association, trade unions, and female members of the Italian Parliament, an initial set of labor laws was established in the early 1960s, which affected female job precariousness and improved female working conditions in agriculture.Footnote 62 A law was passed in 1962 to tighten up on fixed-term contracts, seeking to outlaw the violations that a parliamentary inquiry had brought to light. In 1963 a law was introduced to forbid the dismissal of women workers for matrimonial causes, thus quashing the spinsterhood clauses. In 1958 a law on industrial homework was also passed, which did not solve the problem but was a first step toward a full recognition of the status of industrial homeworkers, which actually occurred fifteen years later.

As the 1963–1964 economic crisis followed on from the economic boom, about three hundred thousand Italian women were ousted from paid work. Job stability along with the fight against job precariousness became key demands for Italian women workers and their associations.Footnote 63 In 1965 the Union of Italian Women (UDI), the major left-wing Italian women's association, promoted a national conference in Milan followed by a large demonstration of more than four thousand women. The title of the conference, which became the demonstration's major slogan, was “Women's right to stable and qualified work,” testifying to the UDI's innovative approach and language.

In 1966, another labor law “on individual dismissals” was passed, outlawing discrimination based on sex, religion, or for being a member of political parties and trade unions. That law was particularly important with a view to reducing women workers’ discrimination and their related job precariousness. A few years later, in 1970, the enforcement of the Statute of Workers’ Rights represented the climax of postwar Italian labor movement struggles. The charter marked a turning point in Italian industrial relations, with power relationships shifting as workers benefited from more rights in the workplace. In particular, that law represented a major achievement on the side of job stability, since it regulated dismissals by paying specific attention to workers’ rights.Footnote 64

Job Stability and Precariousness in 1970s Italy: A Gender Perspective

As stated by different scholars, the 1970s can be considered a turning point in labor history in regard to the forms of wage labor. Among the main changes introduced in the 1970s, Jan Lucassen recalls the “more flexible terms of labour contracts” and the “increased participation in wage labour by women.”Footnote 65 The model of flexibility first appeared in the second half of the 1970s in the United States and in Great Britain, spreading throughout Europe and Italy from the early 1980s. It was supposed to contrast with the rigidity that was held to characterize the labor market at the time, to a lesser degree in Great Britain and North America and more significantly in the major Western European countries, among which Italy was in the forefront.Footnote 66 The concept of “flexibility” seemed particularly suited to reducing production and labor costs and recuperating the loss in profit margins in the wake of the so-called 1970s crisis. A reduction in the bargaining strength of the labor force tilted the balance of power in favor of the large enterprises, which began to embrace economic theories that deemed the security and stability of labor relationships to be an element of “rigidity” that hampered growth and economic development.Footnote 67

In the Italian context, the 1970s was a rather complex period for women's work. In the first half of the decade, important laws were passed and regulations implemented, generalizing employment stability for both men and women and establishing a network of social services, such as kindergartens, crucial for women workers in order to balance their working and family life. Moreover, in the 1970s an extraordinary number of women started looking for paid work and many of them found a stable job in the growing tertiary sector, especially in state-controlled branches, increasing the overall rates of female employment.Footnote 68 However, in the second half of the decade, Italy saw an extensive new phase in the restructuring of industrial capitalism, which suddenly led to new forms of dequalification, interchangeability, and, last but not least, precariousness of the labor force.

Before the introduction of the so-called “flexible” contracts in the 1980s, other “flexible” labor arrangement spread all over Italy, triggering a worsening in labor conditions, above all for female workers. Since the mid-1970s, the decentralization of the productive structureFootnote 69 has been the main strategy adopted by Italy's largest enterprises to cut production and labor costs in the industrial sector. The subsequent growth of small enterprises was accompanied by the spread of black labor and industrial homework especially in the center-north of Italy. Many of the largest factories downsized their workforce and closed some staff departments in favor of the cheaper subcontracting or homework, leading some socioeconomic scholars to term workers’ condition in the smaller factories as “precarious.”Footnote 70

Women workers suddenly became the main victims of the new spread of job precariousness, occurring in the wake of the 1970s crisis. They were most likely to work as unregistered workers in the informal economy or in the smaller factories, experiencing worse working conditions and fewer or no labor rights. Moreover, the extraordinary increase in industrial homework, in spite of the newly enforced law in 1973, was again highly feminized. Many 1970s’ reportsFootnote 71 show how the above-mentioned process adversely affected both women's working conditions and female job stability both in the north and in the south of Italy.

Since the early 1970s, women's associations like UDI, and to a lesser extent other feminist groups such as “trade union feminists,”Footnote 72 organized important conferences and rallies in favor of female employment that was threatened by the early effects of the 1970s crisis.Footnote 73 A large number of women had been expelled from Italian factories within the process of industrial decentralization, often becoming informal workers both in the industrial and service sector. In particular, the introduction of part-time jobs in the industrial sector was seen as a possible threat to women's stability and qualification. In its 1974 report UDI underlined how part-time arrangements were already in force in the service sector, with the result of fostering precarious and unqualified jobs. Women workers’ stability became a relevant issue also in the discussion on the role of women's labor in economic development,Footnote 74 upheld in the aftermath of the UN International Year of Women in 1975.

Italian Women Workers and Job Precariousness in the Post-Fordist Era

The early 1980s marked a turning point in the power relationship existing between the Italian labor movement and large enterprises, with a progressive decrease in trade unions’ power and consensus.Footnote 75 In this context, the model of flexibility became increasingly important in the management of employees by enterprises and, since the early 1980s, as a part of the Italian government employment strategy, which actually based the creation of new jobs on this model.Footnote 76 The spread of “nonstandard” contractual forms in Italy arose as a direct consequence of legislative amendments introduced from the 1980s onward, even though more informal flexible labor arrangement (i.e., homework, undocumented work, subcontracting) were widespread in the 1970s. Unlike other European countries,Footnote 77 where a less restrictive labor legislation permitted various ways of introducing flexibility, a process of “deregulation” took place in Italy in order to make the labor market more flexible.Footnote 78 Thus, the Italian case can be considered an example of a state-controlled approach to the introduction of flexibility in the labor market since every norm regarding nonstandard contracts is regulated via legislation, changing the laws introduced in 1960s and early 1970s.Footnote 79

The first step was realized between 1984 and 1987: part-time jobs, fixed-term contracts, “work and training contracts,” and so-called “solidarity” contracts were introduced. Fixed-term contracts were allowed in 1987, when the government amended the 1962 law. Since the late 1990s, there was an unprecedented acceleration in the flexibility process. A new law in 1997 introduced additional measures: temporary agency work was allowed, amending the law implemented in 1960 against so-called “caporalato,” which had outlawed it, and continuous and coordinated collaboration contracts (Co.Co.Co) were regulated by law.Footnote 80 Workers hired under these contracts, usually known as “collaborators,” are supposed to be semi-independent workers (parasubordinati)—that is, neither full employees nor fully self-employed.Footnote 81

In the past fifteen years, three main labor law reforms have been passed. The first, going by the name of  the “Biagi law,” was passed in 2003, during the second Berlusconi government (2001–2005), which was supported by a center-right coalition. The second, the so-called “Fornero law,” was passed in 2012 during the technocratic government led by former European Commissioner Mario Monti (2011–2013). Under the “Biagi law,” a high number of new “nonstandard” contracts were introduced—as many as forty-one according to legal experts.Footnote 82 The “Fornero Law,” in particular, contains a paragraph on so-called “point-blank dismissals,” the same phenomenon existing in the 1950s.

In December 2014, a new labor reform known as the “Jobs Act” was passed by the Italian Parliament.Footnote 83 According to several legal experts,Footnote 84 the reform has changed the main pillars introduced by the 1970 Statute of Workers’ Rights since it makes workers’ dismissals for economic and disciplinary reasons easier and less expensive. The law does not substantially reduce the number of so-called “atypical contracts” but increases labor flexibility allowing for more renewals of fixed-term contracts for three years altogether. Moreover, new workers hired on open-ended contracts could not benefit from full labor and social rights, applied to the workers already on the payroll, until they had seniority. Although the new system of income support includes new categories of workers, such as some “collaborators,” the amount and length of unemployment benefits are closely related to the previous employment, excluding most of the long-term unemployed, the highly precarious workers, and women having a career break due to maternity.Footnote 85

The link between the flexibility model and the spread of precarious work around the world, and especially in Europe and Italy,Footnote 86 has been recently analyzed by an increasing number of studies. According to a comparative study realized in 2012 and taking into account fifteen European countries, work has become precarious in the twenty-first century for a variety reasons: the indefinite renewal of temporary labor contracts, entailing work and wage instability; the absence of social rights connected to the employment contract; low and unstable salaries, which do not allow workers to have a decent standard of living; and the increasing number of contractual agreements, which do not guarantee decent working conditions.Footnote 87

Some of these studies have focused in particular on the relationship between gender and job precariousness,Footnote 88 revealing significant continuities with the Fordist period, especially in regard to the Italian case. As a matter of fact, specific forms of precarious work already affecting women in the 1950s and 1960s, such as fixed-term contracts and “point-blank dismissals,” are now back in the news.

Labor market dynamics show that female employment has risen constantly since the 1970s. In the 1980s the increase in female employment was mainly absorbed by the tertiary sector (in particular, public administration) and the ways of entering the labor market were mostly standard.Footnote 89 In the 1990s, women were usually hired by “nonstandard” contracts more often than men, thus such forms of work became more feminized and were often considered a predominantly “female” issue in the collective perception of the 1990s.Footnote 90

Since the late 1990s the increasing role of global female migrants in the Italian labor market (especially in the care sector) has enhanced the importance of the intersection of gender, race, and citizenship in analyzing job precariousness. Often being part of the global care chain, female migrants usually experience higher levels of job precariousness compared with native Italian women, due to their lack of citizenship. Their stay itself in the country can be highly precarious, as they can be expelled after the expiry of their contract, if it is regular; and if is not, then their situation can be even worse.Footnote 91

For some experts atypical contracts had facilitated Italian women's entrance in the labor market and favored employment in the 1990s, but for others they had contributed to widening the gap between men and women that had begun to close falteringly in the two previous decades.Footnote 92 The data reveal that as female employment significantly increased, there was a corresponding decrease in “standard” work for the same number of employees,Footnote 93 casting doubt on a positive relationship between feminization and flexibilization of work, on the one hand, and emphasizing the close relations between flexibilization and job precariousness, on the other. For instance, the highly feminized public sector of education, where according to official estimates seventy-nine percent of workers (mainly school teachers) are female, is one of the sectors with the highest percentage of precarious workers.Footnote 94 They have recently been entitled to compensation by the European Court of Justice that has condemned the Italian government for breaching the European directive on fixed-term contracts.Footnote 95

In the 2000s and above all since the beginning of the economic crisis of 2008, the relationship between the “feminization” of atypical contracts and the so-called “gender nature of precarious work” emerged at various levels. In the crisis years, ISTAT reported that female involuntary part-time employment was twice as high in Italy as the European average (i.e., 58.1 percent versus 25.5 percent), one working mother over two. Moreover, women are more precariously employed than men, since nonstandard female workers are 14.3 percent as opposed to 9.3 percent of nonstandard male workers. Women have fewer possibilities to be stabilized than men, just  eleven percent against seventeen percent.Footnote 96 Significant percentages of precarious work can be found in all the main economic sectors, including industry, where fixed-term contract, temporary agency work and subcontracting are mainly applied, but also in agriculture, where black and informal labor mostly involving migrant workers, both male and female, have prevailed.

Important studies have revealed in detail the consequences of the spread of “nonstandard” contracts on female careers and on women's working conditions, not only for low-skilled workers but also for high-skilled ones such as academic researchers.Footnote 97 Firstly, the relationship between work and maternity has become problematic again as confirmed by research performed by ISTAT, which stated that about eight hundred thousand Italian women declared that they had lost their jobs as a consequence of pregnancy/maternity, either because they were dismissed or because they were forced to hand in their resignations.Footnote 98

Furthermore, Italy has one of the lowest fertility rates in OECD countries (1.39 child per woman), and one of the highest average ages for giving birth to the first child (30 years old).Footnote 99 This is not surprising, as the phenomenon of so-called “point-blank dismissals” has been brought to light by women's associations in the past few years and the latest labor law deals with the problem. Fixed-term contracts have often been used to fire pregnant women, as shown by an increasing number of legal disputes regarding the maternity rights of “atypical” workers.Footnote 100

In the Italian system, maternity leave depends on the mother's contract type. In the past decade it has been progressively extended to most of the nonstandard workers. Nevertheless, the benefits actually ensured depend on the mother's employment status at the time of pregnancy and the year before.Footnote 101 The Italian National Institute for Social Security (INPS) explicitly takes into consideration “female precarious workers” among those who can benefit from of maternity-leave indemnities paid over directly by the state. In any case, they will just receive a lower cumulative indemnity, instead of the eighty percent of the monthly salary granted to permanent workers for at least five months.Footnote 102 On the contrary, formally self-employed women, irrespective of their income level, are not entitled to any form of paid maternity leave.

As well as in the 1950s and 1960s, the classification struggle has played a crucial role in twenty-first century Italy, since only workers who are formally employees with open-ended contracts are entitled to full social rights and welfare provisions. Several studies and inquiries have shown how many workers have been forced to become “collaborators,” formally self-employed workers, in order to get the job, even though they often work as employees or have no power over their working conditions.Footnote 103 This is particularly troubling in the case of women, who are also deprived of the welfare provisions related to maternity, risking job loss at any time. In the crisis years, the absence of a basic platform of social rights led female and male precarious workers to organize a growing number of protests and rallies.Footnote 104 Several “collaborators” and self-employed women have struggled with the INPS (Italian National Security Body) in order to obtain some kind of welfare provision, decrying the inequalities they have been experiencing.Footnote 105

The precarity-maternity issue also entered the political agenda of the women's associations in the twenty-first century. Several female associations, ranging from third-wave feminist groups,Footnote 106 second-wave feminists, and, once again, the UDI have started addressing the relationship between job precariousness and self-determination in the private sphere. In 2006, UDI launched the campaign “Precarity makes us sterile” (La precarietà rende sterili),Footnote 107 which testified to the association's continuing commitment toward women's work stability but also its renewed elaboration inspired by both feminist thinking and the claims of a new generation of women who have had to bear the consequences of job precariousness.

Conclusion

The Italian case study analyzed here reveals that with the progressive affirmation of a more regulated and stable system of labor relations during the course of the twentieth century and, in particular, in the Fordist period, the “precarity” category has started to be conceptualized and used in contemporary sources. The achievement of greater working stability in the Fordist era by the twentieth century working classes seems to constitute the necessary background for the elaboration of the category of precarity by the different social actors. In this perspective it is hardly surprising that the female workers and the respective organizations clash with the precarity inherent in the plurality of labor relations and conditions experienced by women, the greatest “reserve army of labor” of the Fordist era.

Broadly speaking, adopting “precarity” as a pervasive category seems to be particularly useful for a rereading of the labor conditions and relations in the industrial era, the formation of the working class, and the cycles of social conflict. Rereading the history of industrial capitalism through the binomial stability/precarity can allow us to observe the evolution not only of the central proletariat and its path toward growing levels of stability, but also to retrace the changes in the labor conditions of the so-called peripheral/marginal subjects among whom women, migrants, and—for the nineteenth-early twentieth century phase of capitalism—of their children as well. This helps us understand the extent to which the existence of these subjects was functional to the progressive stabilization of the central proletariat during Fordism.

In the hypothesis proposed here based on the Italian case study, employment stability appears to be the fruit of a nonlinear process, not exclusively dependent on the economic cycles but influenced decisively by the pressure exerted by the workers’ and women's movement and by the inclusion of those demands into the agendas of political parties and, later, into proposed legislation. Twentieth-century labor legislation has indeed played a fundamental role in redefining labor relations in a more stable sense in the Fordist era and in the reassertion of more precarious working forms in the post-Fordist era. The recent sentence issued by the European Court of Justice and the enormous numbers of precarious workers in the public sector overall, mainly female, clearly testifies to how successive Italian governments, during recent decades, have not only deregulated the private labor market, but have also applied the same managerial strategy in the state-controlled sectors.

The Italian case study sheds light on continuity and changes regarding the development of job precariousness in the second half of the twentieth century. One of the major continuities is the gender dimension of precarious work, which represents not only an Italian issue, but also a European and global one. The conclusion of a recent European project clearly underlined that European women are more at risk of precarity because of their greater family care responsibilities and the absence of support mechanisms that allow them to participate equally in the labor market.Footnote 108 In 2010, the European Parliament approved a resolution on “precarious women workers,” which states that the “gender nature of precarious work” and gender discrimination underlie the current spread of job precariousness.Footnote 109 Significantly, no European government has implemented this resolution.

Job precariousness in the last sixty years in Italy has been a source of work-life imbalances for women, jeopardizing their chances of self-determination both in the work-life and private sphere. Precarious work, such as fixed-term contracts, has been a way of depriving women of their maternity rights in order to cut labor costs. Specific forms of discrimination such as “point-blank dismissals” strongly dealt with in the Fordist period, reappeared in the post-Fordist ones, clearly showing the male dominance model in the Italian labor market and in the entrepreneurial culture. As a matter of fact, women in both periods are the workers who most of all experienced job precariousness.

As emerges from studies on the automotive value chain and global care chain,Footnote 110 the spread of job precariousness in postindustrial Italy presents specific characteristics closely connected to the new stage of globalization,Footnote 111 a key topic that requires further analysis. The global spread of precarious work in the twenty-first century influences working conditions both in the old industrial countries and in the newly emerging ones,Footnote 112 which have become far more similar along the transnational value chains of goods or services, as suggested by Heidi Gottfried.Footnote 113 The slogan “precarious work affects us all” launched by the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF) in 2008–2009,Footnote 114 adopted by the main Italian Metalworker's Federation (FIOM) in Italy, clearly summarizes the fact that the spread of precarious work has no limits,Footnote 115 not only at the geographical level but also among social groups, as shown by the level of precarity that also characterizes highly qualified workers like academic researchers in Italy as well as around the world.

To conclude, a gendered global approach seems to be particularly suitable for historicizing precarious work. Two main pillars are proposed: gender as a constant feature of precarious work within the history of capitalism and the global dimension as a new challenge for precarious work in the new millennium. Using a gender perspective seems to be particularly important in the light of the so-called phenomenon of global feminization of labor that is closely related, according to most scholars,Footnote 116 to the global spread of precarious work. Moreover, adopting a global perspective can help to better understand the relationship between job precariousness, on the one hand, and macroeconomic dynamics, production models, labor movement actions, and labor laws, on the other. Such relationships contributed to the formation of the so-called Employment Standard Relationship in the Fordist Era and to the spread of highly precarious labor arrangements in the twenty-first century.

Footnotes

*

This article benefited from an EURIAS Fellowship at the Institute for Human Sciences of Vienna, also supported by the European Commission, Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions – COFUND Programme – FP7. I wish to thank the following colleagues for their comments and suggestions on the draft version of this article: Eileen Boris, Christian De Vito, Mirco Dondi, Chad A. Goldberg, Berteke Waaldijk, and Volker Telljohann.

References

NOTES

1. Michael Piore and Charles Sabel, The Second Industrial Aivide: Possibilities for Prosperity (New York, 1984); Philip Armstrong and John Harrison, Capitalism Since World War II: The Making and Breakup of the Great Boom (London, 1984); Aris Accornero, Era il secolo del lavoro (Bologna, 2000); Enzo Rullani and Luca Romano, eds., Il postfordismo: idee per il capitalismo prossimo venturo (Milan, 1998).

2. Van Der Linden, Marcel, “San Precario: A New Inspiration for Labor Historians,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class of the Americas 11 (2014): 9–21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. See, for instance, Elisabeth Prugl, Global Construction of Gender: Home-Based Work in the Political Economy of the 20th Century (New York, 1999).

4. Janssens, Angélique, “The Rise and Decline of the Male Breadwinner Family? An Overview of the Debate,” International Review of Social History 42 (1997): 1–24 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Patricia Hudson, “The Historical Construction of Gender: Reflections on Gender and Economic History,” in Frontiers in the Economics of Gender, ed. Francesca Bettio and Alina Verashchagina (London and New York, 2008), 21–41.

6. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge, 1990).

7. Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremis—The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991 (London, 1994).

8. Francesca Bettio, The Sexual Division of Labor (Oxford, 1988).

9. Crenshaw, Kimberlé W., “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43 (1991): 1241–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Heidi Gottfried, Gender, Work and Economy: Unpacking the Global Economy (Cambridge, 2012).

10. Hudson, “The Historical Construction of Gender.”

11. Leah F. Vosko, Temporary Work: The Gendered Rise of a Precarious Employment Relationship (Toronto, 2000); Anne-Sophie Beau, Un siècle d'emplois précaires (Paris, 2004); Eloisa Betti, “Women's Working Conditions and Job Precariousness in Historical Perspective. The Case of Italian Industry during the Economic Boom (1958–1963),” in Making Sense, Crafting History: Practices of Producing Historical Meaning, ed. Izabella Agárdi, Berteke Waaldijk, and Carla Salvaterra (Pisa, 2010), 177–80; Van Der Linden, “San Precario.”

12. See also, Betti, Eloisa, “La precarietà del lavoro come fenomeno storico: un approccio di genere. Prime riflessioni metodologiche-storiografiche,” Memoria e ricerca 46 (2014): 151–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. Christian G. De Vito, “Precarious Pasts. Labour Flexibility and Labour Precariousness as Conceptual Tools for the Historical Study of the Interactions Between Labour Relations,” in On the Road to Global Labour History, ed. Karl H. Roth (Leiden and Boston, forthcoming).

14. Stefano Merli, Proletariato di fabbrica e capitalismo industriale, il caso italiano 1880–1900 (Florence, 1972); Ramella, Franco, “Il problema della formazione della classe operaia in Italia,” Classe 10 (1975): 107–25Google Scholar.

15. For a comprehensive overview, see Stefano Musso, “Gli operai nella storiografia contemporanea. Rapporti di lavoro e relazioni sociali,” in Tra fabbrica e società. Mondi operai nell'Italia del Novecento, ed. Stefano Musso (Milan, 1999), IX–XLV.

16. Duccio Bigazzi, Il Portello. Operai tecnici e imprenditori all'Alfa Romeo 1906–1926 (Milan, 1988); Lungonelli, Michele, “Una fonte per un mutamento di prospettiva: la classe operaia italiana nei libri matricola,” Archivi e imprese 1 (1990): 20–26 Google Scholar.

17. Piva, Francesco, “Classe operaia e mobilità del lavoro in fabbrica,” Studi storici 27 (1986): 245–63Google Scholar.

18. See, for instance, Tilly, Louise, “Paths of Proletarianization: Organization of Production, Sexual Division of Labor and Women's Collective Action,” Signs 7 (1981): 400–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Michelle Perrot, Les Ouvriers en Gréve: France 1871–1890 (Paris and the Hague, 1974); Joanne W. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1999); Alice Kessler-Harris, Gendering Labor History (Urbana-Chicago, 2007).

19. De Clementi, Andreina, “Appunti sulla formazione della classe operaia in Italia,” Quaderni Storici 32 (1976): 684–728 Google Scholar; Marina Cattaruzza, La formazione del proletariato urbano. Immigrati, operai di mestiere, donne a Trieste dalla metà del secolo XIX alla prima guerra mondiale (Turin, 1979); Simonetta Ortaggi Cammarosano, “Laboring Women in Northern and Central Italy in the Nineteenth Century,” in Society and Politics in the Age of the Risorgimento: Essays in Honour of Denis Mack Smith, ed. John A. Davis and Paul Ginsborg (Cambridge, 1991), 152–83; Pescarolo, Alessandra, “I mestieri femminili: continuità e spostamenti di confine nel corso dell'industrializzazione,” Memoria. Rivista di storia delle donne 30 (1990): 152–83Google Scholar.

20. Vosko, Temporary Work; Beau, Un siècle d'emplois précaires; Augusto De Benedetti, Il masso di Sisifo. Studi sull'industrializzazione in bilico (Rome, 2006), 167–222; Eloisa Betti, “Precarietà e fordismo. Le lavoratrici dell'industria bolognese tra anni Cinquanta e Sessanta,” in Tra luoghi e mestieri. Spazi e culture del lavoro nell'Italia del Novecento, ed. Gilda Zazzara (Venice, 2013), 17–45.

21. Gerry Rodgers and Janine Rodgers, eds., Precarious Jobs in Labour Market: The Growth of Atypical Employment in Western Europe (Geneva, 1989).

22. Paolo Sylos Labini, “Precarious Employment in Sicily,” International Labor Review (March, 1964).

23. Lutz, Vera, “The Growth Process in a Dual Economic System,” Banca Nazionale del lavoro Quarterly Review 9 (1958)Google Scholar; Paolo Sylos Labini, “Aspetti dello sviluppo economico in Italia,” in Problemi dello sviluppo economico, ed. Paolo Sylos Labini (Rome-Bari, 1970).

24. Paolo Sylos Labini, Saggio sulle classi sociali (Rome, 1974).

25. Massimo Paci, Mercato del lavoro e classi sociali in Italia (Bologna, 1973); Luca Meldolesi, Disoccupazione ed esercito industriale di riserva in Italia (Bari, 1972).

26. Jean C. Barbier, “Precariousness” of Employment: Linguistic and Conceptual Differences, Political Discourse and Academic Debate in Five Countries, Germany, Spain, France, Italy and the UK (Munich, 2002); European Commission, DG Research, FP5, Precarious Employment in Europe: A Comparative Study of Labor Market Related Risks in Flexible Economies, Esope Final Report (2004).

27. Francesco Garibaldo, ed., Flessibili o marginali? Le nuove forme di lavoro in Italia e in Europa (Rome, 1992).

28. Marino Regini, ed., La sfida della flessibilità. Impresa, lavoro e sindacati nella fase “post-fordista” (Milan, 1998).

29. Andrea Tiddi, Precari. Percorsi di vita tra lavoro e non lavoro (Rome, 2002); Federico Chicchi, Derive sociali: precarizzazione del lavoro, crisi del legame sociale ed egemonia culturale del rischio (Milan, 2001); Roberto Rizza, ed., Politiche del lavoro e nuove forme di precarizzazione lavorativa (Milan, 2000).

30. Richard Sennet, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (London, 1998); Pierre Bourdieu, “La précarité est aujourd'hui partout,” in Contre-feux, ed. Pierre Bordieau (Paris, 1998); Ulrick Beck, The Brave New World of Work (Cambridge, 2000).

31. Luciano Gallino, Il costo umano della flessibilità (Rome-Bari, 2001); Luciano Gallino, Il lavoro non è una merce. Contro la flessibilità (Rome, 2007).

32. Rossella Basile, “Mito e inganno. La rappresentazione della flessibilità del lavoro nel dibattito pubblico” in Un mercato del lavoro atipico. Storia ed effetti della flessibilità in Italia, ed. Giovanna Altieri (Rome, 2009), 155–90.

33. For a comprensive overview, see Annalisa Murgia, and Emiliana Armano, Mappe della precarietà, 1, Spazi, rappresentazioni, esperienze e critica delle politiche del lavoro che cambia (Bologna, 2012).

34. See, for instance, Bruno Caruso, “The Concept of Flexibility in Labor Law. The Italian Case in the European Context,” in Employment and Labor Market Legislation in Europe; Comparing Italy and Germany, ed. Bruno Caruso (Milan, 2004); Eloisa Betti, Mutamenti nei rapporti di lavoro in Italia dalla crisi degli anni ‘70 alla flessibilità (Bologna, 2005).

35. Gallino, Il lavoro non è una merce.

36. See, for instance, Ilaria Possenti, Flessibilità. Retoriche e politiche di una condizione contemporanea (Verona, 2012).

37. Judy Fudge and Rosemary Owen, eds., Precarious Work, Women and the New Economy: The Challenge to Legal Norms (Oxford and Portland, 2006).

38. Leah F. Vosko, Martha MacDonald, and Iain Campbell, eds., Gender and the Contours of Precarious Employment (New York, 2009).

39. Laura Fantone, ed., Genere e precarietà (Naples, 2011).

40. De Simone, Gisella and Scarponi, Stefania, “Genere, lavori precari, occupazione instabile,” Lavoro e diritto 24 (2010): 337–342 Google Scholar.

41. Ignazio Masulli, ed., Precarietà del lavoro e società precaria nell'Europa contemporanea, (Rome, 2004).

42. Bellavitis, Anna and Stella, Simonetta Piccone, “Flessibili/precarie,” Genesis 7 (2008)Google Scholar.

43. Breman, Jan and Van der Linden, Marcel, “Informalizing the Economy: The Return of the Social Question at a Global Level,” Development and Change 45 (2014): 920–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44. Janssens, “The Rise and Decline of the Male Breadwinner Family.”

45. Betti, “Women's Working Conditions and Job Precariousness”; Betti, “Precarietà e fordismo.”

46. Stefano Musso, Storia del lavoro in Italia dall'Unità ad oggi (Venice, 2002); Enrico Pugliese, “Gli squilibri del mercato del lavoro,” in Storia dell'Italia republicana. La trasformazione dell'Italia: sviluppo e squilibri (Turin, 1995), 421–65.

47. Anna Di Gianantonio, “Calze di seta o calze spaiate? La condizione operaia femminile dal secondo dopoguerra ad oggi,” in Tra fabbrica e società, ed. Stefano Musso, 203–42.

48. Maria Casalini, “Tra guerra e dopoguerra, donne e uomini nel mondo operaio,” in Mondi femminili in cento anni di sindacato, ed. Gloria Chianese (Rome, 2008), 23–161.

49. Bordieau, Pierre, “Social Space and Symbolic Power,” Sociological Theory 7 (1989), 14–25 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chad A. Goldberg, Citizens and Paupers. Relief, Rights, and Race from the Freedmen's Bureau to Workfare (Chicago, 2007).

50. Eloisa Betti, “Gli archivi dell'UDI come fonti per la storia del lavoro femminile,” in Il genere nella ricerca storica, ed. Saveria Chemotti and Maria C. La Rocca (Padua, 2015): 483–509.

51. Joanne W. Scott, “A Statistical Representation of Work: La Statistique de l'industrie à Paris, 1847–1848,” in Joanne Wallach Scott, ed., Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1999), 111–38.

52. ISTAT, Sommario di statistiche storiche 1861–1975 (Rome, 1976), table 107, 108.

53. Istituto Ricerche Economico Sociali del Piemonte, L'occupazione femminile dal declino alla crescita (Turin, 1989).

54. ISTAT, “Indagine speciale sulle persone non appartenenti alle forze di lavoro,” Supplemento straordinario al bollettino mensile di statistica (1971).

55. Anna Badino, Tutte e casa? Donne tra migrazione e lavoro nella Torino degli anni Sessanta (Rome, 2008).

56. Betti, “Precarietà e fordismo.”

57. ISTAT, Sommario di statistiche storiche.

58. Commissione parlamentare d'inchiesta sulle condizioni dei lavoratori in Italia, Relazioni della Commissione parlamentare di inchiesta sulle condizioni dei lavoratori in Italia, 8, Rapporti particolari di lavoro: contratto a termine, lavoro in appalto, lavoro a domicilio, apprendistato (Rome 1962).

59. Società Umanitaria di Milano, Licenziamenti a causa di matrimonio. Atti del convegno di studio organizzato dal Comitato di associazioni femminili per la parità di retribuzione, Milan, 25–26 February 1961 (Florence, 1962).

60. Commissione parlamentare d'inchiesta, Rapporti particolari di lavoro.

61. Società Umanitaria di Milano, Il cottimo (Milan, 1967); Mario Regini, Emilio Reyneri, Lotte operaie e organizzazione del lavoro (Padua, 1971).

62. Maria Vittoria Ballestrero, Dalla tutela alla parità. La legislazione italiana sul lavoro delle donne (Bologna, 1979).

63. Betti, “Precarietà e fordismo.”

64. Betti, “La precarietà del lavoro come fenomeno storico.”

65. Lucassen, Jan, “Outlines of a History of Labor,” Iish Research Paper 51, (2013)Google Scholar.

66. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity; Ignazio Masulli, “Lavoro e cittadinanza sociale,” in Precarietà del lavoro e società precaria, 26–62; Arne L. Kalleberg, Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and Precarious Employment Systems in the United States, 1970s to 2000s (New York, 2011).

67. Breman, Van der Linder, “Informalizing the Economy.”

68. Paci, Mercato del lavoro e classi sociali; Gabriele Griffin, ed., Women's Employment, Women's Studies and Equal opportunities 1945–2001. Reports from nine European Countries (Hull, 2002).

69. Brusco, Sebastiano, “The Emilian Model: Productive Decentralisation and Social Integration,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 6 (1982): 167–84Google Scholar.

70. Sebastiano Brusco, “Organizzazione del lavoro e decentramento produttivo nel settore metalmeccanico,” in Sindacato e piccola impresa: strategia del capitale e azione sindacale nel decentramento produttivo, ed. Flm Bergamo (Bari, 1975); Pietro Alessandrini, ed., Lavoro regolare e lavoro nero (Bologna, 1978).

71. See, for instance, Lavoro a domicilio e decentramento dell'attivita produttiva nei settori tessile e dell'abbigliamento in Italia, ed. Luigi Frey (Milan, 1975); Maria R. Cutrufelli, Operaie senza fabbrica: inchiesta sul lavoro a domicilio (Rome, 1977).

72. Maud A. Bracke, Women and the Reinvention of the Political: Feminism in Italy 1968–1983 (London, 2014).

73. Margherita Repetto, L'espansione dell'occupazione femminile: un problema in più o una strada obbligata per la soluzione dela crisi? (Rome, December 4, 1975), box 25, folder 154, Thematic Collection “Diritto del lavoro,” UDI National Archive, Rome.

74. No al lavoro dequalificato, no al tempo parziale, no all’emarginazione della donna. Le donne protagoniste del nuovo modello di sviluppo (Genoa, March 23, 1974), box 24, folder 148, Thematic Collection “Diritto del lavoro,” UDI National Archive, Rome.

75. Lorenzo Bertucelli, Adolfo Pepe, and Maria Luisa Righi, Il sindacato nella società industriale (Rome, 2008).

76. Ignazio Masulli, “Gli aspetti economico-sociali della crisi degli anni ‘70 e le trasformazioni successive,” in Gli anni Settanta. Tra crisi mondiale e movimenti collettivi, ed. Alberto De Bernardi, Valerio Romitelli, and Chiara Cretella (Bologna, 2009).

77. Peter Auer and Sandrine Cazes, Employment Stability in an Age of Flexibility (Geneva, 2003).

78. Umberto Romagnoli, Giuristi del lavoro. Percorsi italiani di politica del diritto (Rome, 2009); Federico Martelloni, “Mercato del lavoro senza diritto, giuristi del lavoro senza mestiere,” in Il diritto sociale del lavoro. La funzione dei giuristi (Bari, 2011).

79. Betti, Mutamenti nei rapporti di lavoro.

80. Eloisa Betti, “The Image of Precarious Employment in Statistical Sources: The Italian Case,” in Rhetorics of Work, ed. Yannis Yannitsiotis, Dimitra Lampropoulou, and Carla Salvaterra (Pisa, 2008), 211–32.

81. The so-called “collaborator” is a specific type of “atypical” worker, a figure that spread in the Italian labor market between the 1990s and 2000s, thanks to the low taxation linked to the contract. Although the collaborators were supposed to be semi-independent, which is the reason why they were not entitled to full social security provisions, they usually receive a monthly payment and are often economically dependent, as several studies have underlined. See for example, Mario Giaccone, “Use and Abuse of Non-standard Employment Contracts,” European Observatory of Working Life, August 7, 2008, http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/articles/labour-market/use-and-abuse-of-non-standard-employment-contracts (accessed March 24, 2016).

82. Altieri, Un mercato del lavoro atipico.

83. “Deleghe al Governo in materia di lavoro (Jobs Act),” Law n. 183, December 10, 2014.

84. Mario Risciamo and Lorenzo Zappoli, eds., “Jobs Act e contratti di lavoro dopo la legge delega 10 dicembre 2014 n.183,” Working Papers—Centre for the Study of European Labor Law “Massimo D'Antona.”

85. Lavoce.info, “Luci ed ombre del Jobs Act,” I dossier de lavoce.info, http://www.lavoce.info/archives/33382/luci-ombre-jobs-act/ (accessed March 24, 2016).

86. Fabio Berton, Matteo Richiardi, and Stefano Sacchi, Flex-insecurity. Perché in Italia la flessibilità diventa precarietà (Bologna, 2009).

87. European Commission, DG Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, Study on Precarious Work and Social Rights, Final Report (2012); Sonia McKay, “Disturbing Equilibrium and Transferring Risk: Confronting Precarious Work” in Resocialising Europe in a Time of Crisis, ed. Nicola Countouris and Mark Freedland (Cambridge, 2013), 191–212.

88. On the Italian case, see, for instance, Stefania Tarantino and Tristiana Dini, eds., Femminismo e neoliberalismo. Libertà femminile versus imprenditoria di sé e precarietà (Naples, 2014); Fantone, ed., Genere e precarietà; Eloisa Betti, “Donne e precarietà del lavoro in Italia: alcune serie di dati significativi,” in Precarietà del lavoro e società precaria, 109–32.

89. Gasbarrone, Mara, “Sviluppo del terziario e crescita del lavoro femminile,” Economia e lavoro 3 (2000): 47–68 Google Scholar; Tibaldi, Mauro, “L'occupazione femminile nella Pubblica amministrazione: un'analisi dei dati della Ragioneria Generale dello Stato,” Contributi Istat 3 (2009)Google Scholar.

90. Altieri, Giovanna, “‘New economy,’ lavori ‘atipici’ e conseguenze di genere,” Il diritto del mercato del lavoro 2 (2001): 251–61Google Scholar.

91. Cerri, Marco, “La ‘badante’ e il lavoro post-fordista,” Economia e società regionale 3 (2011): 106–25Google Scholar.

92. Renato Fontana, Il lavoro di genere. Le donne tra vecchia e nuova economia (Rome, 2002); Chiara Saraceno, “I paradossi della flessibilità: una prospettiva di genere e generazionale” in Percorsi di lavoro flessibile: un'indagine su lavoratori interinali e collaboratori coordinati e continuativi in Lombardia, ed. Mauro Magatti and Giovanni Fullin, (Rome, 2002).

93. CENSIS, L'impatto della flessibilità sui percorsi di carriera delle donne (Milan, 2000).

94. OECD, Talis 2013 Results: An International Perspective on Teaching and Learning (Paris, 2014); Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università, della Ricerca, Talis 2013 Italia (2014).

95. Court of Justice of the European Union, Italian legislation on fixed-term employment contracts in the school sector is contrary to EU law, Press release 161/14, (Luxembourg, November 26, 2014). Corrado Zunino, “Scuola, Corte giustizia europea: stabilizzazione per almeno 250 mila precari,” Repubblica, November 26, 2014.

96. ISTAT, Rapporto annuale. La situazione del paese nel 2013 (Rome, 2014).

97. Rossella Bozzon, Alessia Donà, Paola Villa, Annalisa Murgia, and Barbara Poggio, “Italy” in Contexualizing Women's Academic Careers: Comparative Perspectives on Gender, Care and Employment Regimes in Seven European Countries, ed. Nicky Le Feuvre, Garcia Working Papers 1 (Trento, 2015): 3–60.

98. Ingenere, ed., “Per un Pink New Deal,” Leggendaria, Special Issue, (2012).

99. ISTAT, Rapporto annual 2015. La situazione del paese (Rome, 2015).

100. European Commission, The Impact of the Economic Crisis on the Situation of Women and Men and on Gender Equality Policies. Synthesis Report (2013).

101. De Simone and Scarponi, eds, Genere, lavori precari, occupazione instabile.

102. INPS, Congedo per maternità alle lavoratrici precarie, http://www.ilo.org/dyn/travail/docs/1864/Lavoratrici_precarie.pdf (accessed March 24, 2016).

103. European Commission, Study on Precarious Work and Social Rights.

104. Choi, Hae-Lin and Mattoni, Alice, “The Contentious Field of Precarious Work in Italy: Political Actors, Strategies and Coalitions,” Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society 13 (2010): 213–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

105. See, for instance, Diversamente occupate, Diritto universale alla maternità. La misura di un corpo che si espande, http://diversamenteoccupate.blogspot.co.uk/ (accessed March 24, 2016); Paola Caruso's blog: http://paolacars.tumblr.com/ (link no longer extant), from Internet Archive, August 17, 2015: http://web.archive.org/web/20150817101607/http://paolacars.tumblr.com/ (accessed March 24, 2016).

106. See, for instance, Fantone, Laura, “Precarious Changes: Gender and Generational Politics in Contemporary Italy,” Feminist Review 87 (2007): 5–20 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

107. La precarietà rende sterili, vogliamo essere libere di creare vite, convivenza e democrazia, Placard (March 8, 2006), UDI National Archive, Rome.

108. European Commission, Study on Precarious Work and Social Rights.

109. European Parliament, Resolution of 19 October 2010 on Precarious Women Workers, October 19, 2010 (n. 2010/2018).

110. See, for instance, “Precariousness and Gender Impact in the Value Chain of the Automotive Industry: A Comparative Study of Five European Regions,” in Critical Issues and Best Practices Emerging from the European Project INCAVALC, http://www.incavalc.eu/en/materiali/14-final-report; Silvia Contarini, “Pensare il precariato e le differenze nell'Italia della globalizzazione,” in Le culture del precariato. Pensiero, azione, narrazione, ed. Silvia Contarini, Monica Jansen, and Stefania Ricciardi (Verona, 2015).

111. Guy Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (London and New York, 2011); Carole Thornley, Steve Jefferys, and Beatrice Appay, Globalisation and Precarious Forms of Production and Employment (Cheltenham, 2010).

112. Actrav, From Precarious Work to Decent Work. Policies and Regulations to Combat Precarious Work (Geneva, 2011); “Meeting the Challenge of Precarious Work. A Workers’ Agenda,” International Journal of Labor Research 5 (2013)Google Scholar.

113. Gottfried, Gender, Work and Economy.

114. For an overview, see Betti, Eloisa and Telljohann, Volker, “Precarietà senza Frontiere. Crisi e diritti sociali in Europa,” ERE 12 (2012): 44–49 Google Scholar.

115. Richard Seymour, We Are All Precarious—On the Concept of the ‘Precariat’ and its Misuses, New Left Project, 2012.

116. Vosko, MacDonals and Campbell, eds., Gender and the Contours of Precarious Employment; Encarnacion Gutierrez-Rodriguez, Migration, Domestic Work and Affect: A Decolonial Approach on Value and the Feminization of Labor (New York and London, 2010); Fudge and Owen, eds., Precarious Work, Women and the New Economy.