Working inside, working outside: Life of women at work

The considerations which follow about women’s work and women at work have been developed by Libera Università Contropiani in the frame of a more general discourse about precariousness and precarization and about the paradigmatic character of migrant labour as explained in the Maurizio Ricciardi’s and Fabio Raimondi’s paper already published on Thistuesday website. The starting point was the analysis of the transformations of the Italian labour-market under the influence of Law n. 30 (about labour and social security) and the so called Bossi-Fini law (concerning migration). The main consequence of this transformation is the impossibility of a representation of labour in the traditional Unionist form and way of struggle.

Although we consider the objective transformations of work in the last twenty years as a fundamental question to understand in order to find a new struggle perspective, we believe that we must always show the subjective instances that have been and are able to express a political position inside and against work. Indeed, we are sure that it is not possible to reduce these instances to a defence or a vindication of a guarantee job. For this reason, we want to underline how, on one hand, the above mentioned transformation determined a strong fragmentation of the working figures today, and how on the other hand the same transformations succeeded because they acted upon these subjective instances of escape from work. These instances were expressed by the new workers generations, by women, by those so-called “guaranteed” workers who have had the possibility to use the social security they gained through mobilisation and fights in order to escape from the factories. They freed their time, and now the patriarchal and capitalistic organization of work and production wants to put again that time at work. This occurs through the multiplication of contractual precarious figures, the so-called atypical (but actually always more diffused) works. But it occurs above all through the precarization of the whole existence due to a radical worsening of wage and of work conditions, and due to a destructuration and redefinition of welfare and national social service.
To consider the presence and activity of these subjective instances means also to underline a political difference between flexibilization and precarization of work. The political importance of this distinction derives from the necessity to understand that, if patriarchal capitalism can precarize work, it is because workers ask for flexibility, today as during the 60’s and ‘70’s workers and feminist movements. While the latter asked for a time freed from capitalistic exploitation, the former turn it into a full labour supply, without any continuity or guarantee for workers. Moreover, the widespread feeling of insecurity deriving from these transformations is the main weapon used by patriarchal capitalism to reduce to silence the political indignation of work.
How can we empower this indignation today? We believe that we can’t answer in a general and abstract way, if we really want to show a political perspective of struggle organization. We believe that it is necessary to understand that this indignation has different faces, expressing for example generational or sexual specificity. Consider the specificity of women condition. Women have been and are one of the most important subject vindicating the liberation of their time and social security, criticizing the sexual division of productive and reproductive work. At the same time women’s labour is crucial in the process of privatization and welfare destructuration that is the other face of the precarization of work wanted by the Law n. 30 and the Bossi-Fini immigration Law.
In order to find a political perspective for women’s organization and struggle, first of all we have to understand what position is at present occupied by women in the labour market. Then we have to listen to their voice and to understand their vindications against work. At the same time, it is clear for us that we have to face the many differences – often conflictual differences – existing between woman and women, and to imagine how to overcome them.
Statistics concerning Italian situation allow to understand women’s position within the present precarisation process. Data concerning Emilia Romagna indicate that more than 50% employees during 2003 are women (14.000 out of 27.000) and 26% of them has been employed with an atypical labour contract (while just 9,8% of men are employed in an atypical way). The percentage of the so-called precarious work represents more than a half of the last year employment, and of this half more than 50% is not voluntary. In addition, looking deeply at employment rates we can see that employment strictly depends on women’s family status: singles without children have a higher employment rate (86%) than married women without children (71%) who in percentage are employed more often than married women who are also mothers (51%). At the same time, the more the number of children increases, the more the number of employed mothers decreases: on the whole of employed mothers, 63% have one child, 35% have two or more children. After the child’s birthday, 20% of women stop to work. These percentages are really expressive. If we consider data concerning wage levels, we can notice that women gain on average 20% money less than men. Because of the difficulty of a conciliation between productive and reproductive work, women cannot reach the optional voices of wage, productiveness rewards or overtime pay. Moreover, even if a part-time job should guarantee the time necessary to that conciliation, women often cannot choose it because the part-time wage is not sufficient to guarantee subsistence. Indeed, women are the subject more exposed to the risk of poverty, not only because of the low wages but also because they are more exposed to unemployment. While the labour market asks for a completely disposable supply of labour force, they cannot guarantee their complete availability because of their double load of work. In addition, poverty is a condition to which single mother are mostly exposed (23% more than in 1991), and for this reason they are also more liable to be blackmailed than other women.
Statistics cannot show the subjective choices underlying the specific approach of women to work, but they allow us to consider how productive and reproductive work are interwowen, in the general frame of the current transformation of patriarchal and capitalistic organization of work. In front of the strong destructuration and privatisation of welfare, and of the diminishing real value of wages, it is getting more and more urgent to supplement the salary of families. Houses, nursery schools, old people care, health are by this time a privilege of people who can pay for them.
Social reproduction’s price doesn’t consist of the entrance of women in the labour market – that could and should be considered also a way of self satisfaction or autonomisation through economical independence – but of the necessity for women to accept work conditions which are getting more and more hard and precarious, as data on atypical contracts and involuntary atypical employment suggest.
At the same time, the double weight of work (inside and autside the house) supposed and demanded by social reproduction determines a great disadvantage for women at work. They are penalized both in the field of employment and wage and in the field of sexual division of reproductive work. This is the reason why we believe it is necessary to speak about patriarchal capitalism. Moreover, the transformation of welfare which forced women into every day worse work conditions, is founded on the exploitation of women’s labour in those sectors (care, education, assistence, public administration) whose privatisation is one of the causes of their beeing liable to be blackmailed. Briefly, today women are forced into a strong alienation of their time due to the absence of that social aid to reproductive work that women and workers movements’ fights had gained. Today the absence of this social aid, which was meant to free women’s time from both productive and reproductive work, implies that women’s time is mostly absorbed both by the family and by the same State which denied social security. In the latter case, women work is exchanged with a starvation wage.
In this framework, we believe it is really important to consider the peculiar position in which migrant women are. Indeed, their position is strictly interwowen with the present transformations of productive organisation and welfare destructuration, while at the same time they express an instance of liberation and control of their own time which could be shared by all working women and could represent a common field of struggle.
The precarization of existence, the destructuration of welfare state, induce the majority of women not only to accept harder and more precarious work conditions – in order to contribute to the family income or to guarantee themselves a future or a personal realization -, but also to produce a real wage chain in order to go on with the reproductive activity they can’t or they don’t want to exploit completely.
The migrant women working condition guarantees that the process of privatization and destructuration of welfare occurring nowadays goes on in at least two ways. On one side, services (from hospital cleaning to old people assistance) are assigned to agencies – often cooperative agencies – the competitiveness of which is guaranteed by a growing salary flexibility and an increase of working time.
On the other side, women are directly engaged by families – which are not necessarily medium-high class families – where they supply the caring work which is not guaranteed any more by the welfare state, and also supply the reproductive work from which males are not in charge of.
The working condition of women in families shows how welfare destructuration provokes deep transformations in social relationships: it is not the capital any more, but the salary, which is in charge of women work in the domestic field.
This is what we mean with the notion of salary chain – a problem which must be analyzed in all its contradictions in the perspective of a political communication among women. In fact, on one side the working condition of some women in the domestic field can represent the possibility of liberation.
If we think of women who pay for other women’s work, we should notice that that paying other women is not only a necessity caused by the abolition of welfare, but also a specific choice women make to free their time from reproductive load.
If we think of migrant women, we should consider that working is not only a necessity caused by the Bossi-Fini law, which strictly links stay contract and work, but we should also consider that, through salary and economic independence, they gain the possibility to exit from rigid patriarchal structures that constrain them.
On the other side, once again, subjective desires to free their time, to work, are actually limited by ongoing transformations. Namely, for women paying a salary to other women, the liberation from reproductive work is only a partial achievement, which is not able to contrast the elimination of socially guaranteed services and which doesn’t influence the social division of work constraining them into the domestic cage. Practically, the fact that women are paid to work in families allows once again males to avoid the reproductive charge which remains, “by definition”, property of women.
The discourse becomes more complex and more specific if we consider the situation of migrant women.
Among them it is possible to distinguish different situations. Consider for example women from Eastern European countries: it is often the case that their migration is necessary in order to compensate for men’s unemployment.
This experience of roles “inversion” leads to an objective breaking of a patriarchal structure as well as of a symbolic dimension according to which women are dependent on males. Namely, the male, who typically is the one “who provides food” for the family, remains at home with children, while the “reproductive” woman earns money. However, women from Eastern Europe countries are the ones who tend to accept full time jobs, living by the family who hired them – this happens also because it allows them to send more money to their family in their country.
There are many important consequences. In fact, the possible effects of the subjective awareness of this “role inversion” are impeded by different causes. A first cause is the fact that that “full time” work takes place once again within domestic walls, where a possible communication with other women sharing the same condition is extremely difficult. A second cause is due to the specific qualities used in the family space.
In fact, it is not possible to avoid to consider how in caring work affective, communicative and relational qualities are expressed, on the basis of which relationships are formed, which are not cold and objective as relationships at work typically are.
These relational qualities cannot be quantified and paid with a salary. Money cannot compensate the quality of life of women who dedicate all their time to work, as they work and live in the same place.
We don’t want to deny the importance of personal realization for women who can express these relational qualities at work. However, it is necessary to conceive of this subjective approach in the more general frame of a “feminilization” of feminine qualities, which play a deep role in the sexual division of work. Due to these “feminine” qualities, the reproductive work is executed by women, and more generally caring, assistance, educational and relational services, are conceived of for women. But this is only part of the story. From a subjective point of view, women tend to accept and assume the dominant view. Due to the fact that they feel themselves realized as women, they do not feel the need to free themselves from the position in which the patriarchal and capitalist work organization confines them.
Migrant women living in Italy with their families experience a peculiar situation. Similarly to all women, they need to reconcile their double load of productive and reproductive work; differently from other women, however, they experience an existence which becomes more and more precarious due to the Bossi-Fini law.
These women not only require services – especially services for infancy and health – and ask for free, not-working time; they often express also a clear and aware refusal of the patriarchal structure of their countries of origin.
In this sense, the experience of women from Central Africa is a paradigmatic one. Namely, being paid for work allows them to be economically autonomous; most importantly, working allows them to be able / in the position to refuse, for example, their men’s polygamy, and to divorce in case men don’t accept their view.
However, the situation of women living alone with children is particularly bad due to the labour market and to the Bossi-Fini law. Divorced women not only have a 69% probability of becoming poor due to their low salary levels, but earning a low salary has implications also for the mechanism to obtain “carta di soggiorno”. Namely, the possibility to stay longer in the country and to benefit from social services is subordinate to the possession of a certain income level. Accordingly, the request for autonomy these women express risks to be blocked by laws which are inspired not only by capitalistic but also by patriarchal principles.
It is certainly not new that the crossing between productive and reproductive work opens a possibility for communication among women.
However, from what we wrote before it becomes clear how difficult it is, from the subjective side, to open spaces for political communication among women. Consider for example the salary chain: it represents a working relationship, thus it is an intrinsically conflictual relationship among women sharing common problems, even though these problems are experienced in different forms and places.
Consider however that work conceived of as means to obtain a salary is not only a necessity determined by the precarization of existence. Work may also offers the possibility to conquer autonomous spaces. This suggests that working in services - even in services which are becoming more and more often private services - may open important communication spaces for women, and particularly for migrant women.Women may share the common request for socially guaranteed services. But this request should take into account profound contradictions, and it should consider the specificity of the different positions of women who work, either being paid (productive work) or not (reproductive work).
These contradictions do not depend only on the objective frammentation of working profiles, but also on the subjective differences in the ways in which women approach work – differences which may be due to ratial but also generational and educational factors.
For this reason, in order to understand which obstacles may render the political communication among women more difficult and which possibilities may promote it, it is always necessary to ask a more general question concerning work and the way to approach work. For the majority of women work is always primarily considered as a means to obtain salary; however, it is necessary to consider that work might be considered in a less instrumental way if it is conceived of as a way to express our own personality and capabilities.
As we have seen writing about caring work, this may represent a problem. However, we should consider that, depending on the qualification level, both the self perception and the way to think of precarization changes. Statistics indicate that women are disadvantaged also as far as qualification is concerned. Namely, even though women in 44% of the cases are more qualified than men, they occupy manager positions in productive structures only in 25% of the cases – this clearly suggests that they are obliged to accept less qualified jobs compared to their educational level.
However, it is important to underline that the more qualified women, and in trend the younger women, tend to conceive of precarization in a positive way, as an instrument to control their time.
Thus their position is , once again, an ambiguous one, because the need for autonomy induce to conceive of and to use precarization as a form of flexibility. However, this approach will change as soon as these women plan to build a family – new needs emerge, as far as time and salary and guarantees are concerned. For this reason, it is necessary to preserve the need for autonomy and for control of time and to temporarily use it in struggles against existence precarization. Namely, the precarization of existence threatens even women who don’t currently experience it.

In order to build common grounds for struggle, it is necessary to underline that women’s need to regain possession of their time is composed by subjective needs of different kinds. These needs are expressed by women living a precarious existence due to the working contract and the permission of stay, but also by women who have a “guaranteed” working place. These latter experience the precarization due to the destructuration of support structures as nurseries, and more generally of guaranteed social assistence. Namely, the destructuration of these services dramatically reduces the salary value and it requires to spend more and more time for others (for owner’s profit, for liberating males from reproductive work).
Again, these needs may come from those women who do not work outside the domestic walls, but who constantly work at home, working during all their life time withourt being paid. The analysis of the condition of these women allows to capture the problematic relationships between salary, social salary and income, and it leads to enlarge the request for well-being which might be advanced by women. Antonella Picchio, a feminist economicist, has underlined this issue in a seminar organized by Contropiani, talking about extended income. The extended income consists of a computation of life standard, in which not only the goods which can be bought thanks to a salary are included, but also the work necessary to reproduce them. We typically eat cooked meat, not raw meat...
For all these reasons, we believe it is important to open communication spaces for working women who have different experiences. This communication might be difficult, thus it is necessary to take into account the specific differences among working women.
In order to open communication spaces it might be necessary also to go against subjective resistances due not only to fear, but due also to a female imagery which may lead to adhere to the more and more compelling requests advanced by capitalist patriarchy. We have seen this phenomenon when we spoke about “feminilization of feminine qualities”. But we can see it also if we think how communication might be substituted by competition. This competition might not be due only to the recognition of the hierarchical power structure existing within working places, but also to the recognition of autoritarian figures which deeply influence women’s imagery. In this way male patriarchal power assumes a symbolic character.
This might represent an obstacle for women who are in charge of a double work, or at least of all reproductive work. Namely, as Antonella Picchio argues, it may render it more difficult for women to become aware that this work is due not only to children but primarily to the weakness of males who ascribe to women the entire responsability of their well being.
The awareness that within reproductive and productive work a radical sexual conflict is taking place is crucial in order to make sure that fights at work continue without internal contradictions. This does not mean that women have to free themselves from men, or that they have to eliminate men, but it means that the bedroom and the kitchen cannot become negotiation spaces, because they are the spaces where a deep political conflict occurs. What is personal is political is a necessary slogan today, because today the redefinition of the production and reproduction relationships has a deep influence on the border separating private and public life – and this is particularly true for women. For this reason, while fighting, women at work have to start from their own life, have to be on women’s side also at work, have to have the courage to be feminist, now.

Libera Università Contropiani