The Covid-19 Pandemic in Italy: With Special Reference to the Effects on Women and Families

In Italy, the pandemic has been developing since February 2020 and was one of the first European countries to be violently affected by the contagions. The health and emergency responses included the closure of schools, childcare and non-essential activities and the increase Working From Home (WFH) with some specific and ambivalent effects on the social sphere. WFH – an uncustomary practice in most organisations in Italy - became in fact mandatory for private companies and the public sector in March 2020. The Italian Government implemented different containment measures at the various phases of the pandemic to support families and workers. This has profoundly transformed people’s lives, both from the point of view of family and significant relationships, and at work, substantially modifying the relationship between these two significant areas. In this chapter, we’ll first present an overview of the containment measures implemented to tackle the spreading of the virus and outline the main policies introduced by the Italian Government, highlighting their contents, aims, and underlying focus. Then we will focus on consequences for women. The pandemic has highlighted ambivalences and risks concerning some phenomena regarding gender relations. In particular, the relationship between men and women is structured in terms of cohabitation and proximity in family relationships. Situations in which the social distancing on a collective level has had as a counterpart a closer closeness and co-presence on a personal level. With the emergence of the Covid 19 emergency in the early 2020s, the media immediately started to highlight the likely future increase in cases of violence against women in the home due to the increased risk of lockdown and the difficulties for victims living with their abuser to report and seek support services. A second theme is the impact on family and work responsibilities integration. Several studies in Italy, including a longitudinal survey conducted by the Authors, have shown how the emergency and containment measures impacted both personal/parental and work spheres, producing adverse effects on the specific group of working parents, especially women. Using a longitudinal approach, with data collected in three waves - April, July, and December 2020 – we assessed the consequences of Working From Home, showing that wellbeing decreased and work-life conflict increased with time and that working parents found the first lockdown particularly challenging.