Childcare and Elderly Care in Bologna

Family is the main provider in the Italian welfare system. As a consequence, supports for care in Italy are underdeveloped since care is almost totally delegated to women capacity to sustain its members. Such model had strong influences on women attitudes: Italy has one of the lowest fertility rates all over Europe and it will be suffering in the next years from an increasingly higher old age dependency ratio, thus worsening the female care overload. Nevertheless, Bologna is a best practice in this worrying scenario. Thanks to a strong social democratic tradition, local welfare system of Bologna has been one of the most attentive to the need of women and it has been the first to introduce childcare services in the ‘60s, while promoting a wider support for dependency in addition to the national provision. The result is that Bologna has the highest female participation rate to labour market in Italy. However, the financial crisis and the consequent reduction of public funds have put in question the sustainability of Bologna’s model in recent years.

In the present paper, we will show results from a series of 8 focus groups involving 34 working women conducted in Bologna during 2013, which have been selected because they have care responsibilities. Stemming from an investigation of both individual and social factors, the analysis will focus on the work-life balance of women, assessing the role of their partners, their family and the local welfare system in it. The comparison between women with childcare duties and women with elderly care will also show how the overload of women in their 50s will be the real challenge for Bologna in the next years, as long as they combine the roles of grandmothers, children of dependent elderly and worker.