Women's Work, the Family & Social Policy : Focus on Italy in a European Perspective

Women’s Work, the Family, and Social Policy focuses on the issue of women’s work in Italy as seen in the context of the last three decades of the twentieth century and against the backdrop of changes that have been occurring since the late sixties in women’s status in society and family. Using a comparative approach, the contributors analyze trends in women’s employment, their motivations to work, the impact on fertility and family patterns of working women, strategies to conciliate work and children, effectiveness of social policy, and the effects of women’s work on family’s income and income distribution. This book looks at women’s work from the point of view of the human capital thus being mobilized and its wide-ranging impact on society and the economy.

The Editors: A former Visiting Professor at New York University, Daniela Del Boca is Professor of Economics and Coordinator of CHILD (Center for Household Income, Labour, and Demographic economics) at the University of Turin, Italy. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Dr. Del Boca is the author of several books and journal articles in the areas of labor economics and economics of the family and co-editor of Labour.
Margherita Repetto-Alaia is Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Vancouver. A recipient of the Fulbright-Hays Fellowship and of a doctoral degree in modern European history from the University of Rome, she actively campaigned on behalf of women in Italy for the reform of family laws, equality in the workplace, and equal opportunity. A lecturer at Columbia University from 1983 to 1994, Dr. Repetto-Alaia has widely published in Italy and the United States on the subject of women in modern and contemporary social and political movements. She is co-author of UDI Union of Italian Women 1944-1978 and co-editor of The Formation of the Italian Republic, 1945-1963 (Peter Lang, 1993).