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The ISTAT survey “Uso del tempo” (regarding time budget arrangement) reveals how, in the Italian culture, gender stereotypes are still strongly rooted and common. An Italian couple out of two (49,1%) is in favor of a very traditional division of roles within the couple: "It is better for the family that man mainly dedicate himself to economic needs and women to take care of the house". This orientation is prevailing in the male population: 53,4% of men (61,8% in the south).
The low female participation in the labor market, together with the chronic lack of social services for childhood, well matches a cultural vision in which family work is still considered a mainly female responsibility. In Italy the women’s participation in work remains among the lowest of the European Union, despite the natality decrease. The female employment rate is 48,1% in the 15-64 age range, more than 10 percentage points under the European average and 20 points under the average of the Northern European countries. This is particularly true in the South and among women with lower education level.
According to the ISTAT Annual Report 2017, there is a strong asymmetry in the distribution of family work even in couples where both spouses work, with the result that Italian occupied women are the most overloaded in Europe.
In Italy, indeed, even when a woman spends the same number of hours as a man at work, she is the one who handle most of the home work, with a double charge of tasks. The average week of an occupied women, considering both paid and family work, consist of 58 hours of overall work (ISTAT 2017).
According to OCSE data, a lesser sharing of family work it’s registered only in Turkey and Portugal, where is also recorded a lower female employment rate. In the Northern European countries, as Sweden and Norway, the gap is reduced even if not canceled.