Pandemic Crisis and Remote Working: Another Step Towards Gender Equal Pay and Bigenitoriality

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to investigate the ways in which in the post-pandemic normality public and private organisations, workers and trade unions will resort to smart working to combat the marginalisation of women’s work. Remote working, in fact, could represent, with a few adjustments, an opportunity to promote in our legal system the values of inclusion and gender equality pursued by the United Nations Generation Equality campaign, the European Strategy for Gender Equality 2020/2025 and the National Plan for Resilience and Resistance. On the other hand, if it is true that the most recent ISTAT surveys show that in Italy in 2020, the drop in employment was concentrated almost exclusively on women, with a decrease of 101,000 jobs, of which 99,000 were held by women, it is equally true that in the last year a trend has emerged in the legislature to recognise in favour of both parents a real right to agile work, as well as a specific leave to meet the needs of family care imposed by the epidemiological emergency. These are the first important experiences that inevitably require an organic rethink, first and foremost through collective bargaining, to ensure that smart working creates a new culture of gender equality, including in terms of pay, and the sharing of family roles, which in Italy, much more than in other countries, is still struggling to take hold.