Italian Women Keep Up the Pressure on Rights
The twentieth century saw profound transformations in women's role in political, economic, social, and cultural relations. Women won the right to vote, shaped their own identity through education and entered the labor market in large numbers. History shows that the women's lobby, fueled by women's movements and associations, was a decisive factor in the various phases of the long process of female emancipation in the 1900s.
The Italian women's lobby is still very active. For in instance, Law 120 of 2011 sets a minimum mandatory percentage of seats assigned to women in corporate boards for listed firms. The battle for pink quotas has brought together a diverse range of new and old associations, women journalists, researchers, administrators, and politicians. Thanks to their joint action, the law was not only passed, but has already had repercussions even before its coming into force (August 2012). In fact, in mid-July 2012 the percentage of women sitting on company boards almost reached 10% (Piera Bello and Paola Profeta's calculations on Consob data), while six years earlier it was below 5%. Still a long shot from the thresholds set by the new law (initially, at least 1/5 of board seats go to women, thereafter 1/3), but a progress nonetheless in a country trailing behind in gender statistics.
What do women lobby for? And why women's lobbies are so effective? These are interesting questions for economics, too. Certainly the fact that women are 50% of the population is a great help: we are not talking about a minority lobbying for its rights. Looking at the recent economic literature on lobbying, we can hypothesize that the pressure exerted by the women's lobby is not so much good-intensive (the amount of money invested into lobbying) but rather time-intensive (the amount of time committed to lobbying). This can limit free-riding opportunistic behavior that arises in collective action and bring about more effective results, especially if women are very focused on their ultimate objective: gender parity.
On the other hand, evolutionary psychology and sociology show that women exhibit a more cooperative and less competitive behavior than men. In the context of a group, for men what's important is to show their individual prowess, while women concentrate on teamwork. These findings are confirmed by studies of experimental economics (see the review of Croson and Gneezy, "Gender differences in preferences", Journal of Economic Literature 2009).
Female skills at networking, teamworking and solidarity-builiding around the objective of gender parity are winning assets in the lobbying for women.
But a lot remains to be done: in countries like Italy, women are as well educated as men, but gender differences in employment rates, compensation, and power positions remain large. Does this mean that the women's lobby has a limited influence? Maybe. However, gender equality in the workplace is not only about rights and benefits for women, it is a growth opportunity for the entire economy. This is the most important challenge women must face today.