This post is also available in:
«It is essential to avoid the risk of undoing all the progress made so far in the field of gender equality in the society and labor market», reads a document by Noi rete donne network in Italy, prepared as a contribution to the next G20 summit.
Despite their differences in vision and interpretation of the phenomenon of globalization and their different political practices, all women’s organizations and groups inside and outside official institutions in Italy agree on two points. The first point is about the awareness that the gap between men and women has widened because of the pandemic and the ensuing crises and the second is that because of this awareness it is the women’s organizations who have been led to think of the most effective solutions to get out of this frightening emergency in a fair way.
Laura Cima, a renowned eco-feminist and author, among others, of the book Ecofeminism in Italy; the roots of a necessary revolution, and leader of a group called Ecofeminism and Sustainability within the Dalla stessa parte (on the same side) network, says that:
“The crisis we are going through is an enormous possibility of repositioning political and economic priorities, both on national and global levels. We have seen what divesting public money from the three major priorities of a civilized country, namely health, education and the prevention of male violence against women leads to, in terms of loss of life and increased social unrest. Now this is where public resources must be used in order to overcome the crisis.”
In Italy, women make up 70% of the workforce in the health sector and are therefore more likely to face health risks. While it is true that women are the protagonists of the response actions to the pandemic, it is equally true that they are also the most affected, also due to the lockdown measures that have had negative effects on sectors with a predominantly female workforce, such as tourism, hospitality, food service, schools, along with those of the informal economy.
Noi rete donne shares the need to promote a road-map for the relaunch of the Brisbane objectives for reducing the gender gap in women’s participation in the labor market. It calls for targeted actions and support and incentive measures that strengthen and stimulate women’s leadership in decision-making roles in politics, public administration, business and civil society, together with an increase in the number of women in governance and the implementation of a rapid digitization of the country that eliminates the technological gender divide as soon as possible.
The Half of it feminist network proposes a series of immediate actions for the post Covid-19 era. Among these are an increase in public kindergartens for 60% of children between 0 and 3 years old with an allocation of 8 billion euros and their realization within the next 5 years; territorial assistance and health services for the elderly and disabled and non-self-sufficient people, with an allocation of at least 4 billion euros and their realization within the next 5 years; and finally cashback for families for amounts spent on care services and assistance, since cashback will favor the emergence of the enormous mass of undeclared work linked to health-care.
A proposal shared by all the Italian groups is a call for strong and global actions to encourage the sharing of childcare duties by both parents, such as extension of parental leave for fathers and that 100% of the compulsory maternity benefit be borne by general taxation. Particular attention is focused on the schools, with a request for the implementation of full time schools, in all educational sectors with an increase in the hours of civic education, with a particular attention for teaching the values such as equality and inclusiveness to overcome bullying, violence and discrimination based on gender, race, religion or sexual orientation, as well as for teaching financial education.
The greater the number of transformations that a system undergoes to pass from an initial to a final state, the greater the waste of resources that this transition entails
According to the proposal document of the Ecofemminista group from Lecce, in Puglia, one of the richest regions in southern Italy, the contribution of women to the ecological transition and the ‘green revolution’ must start first and foremost from the need to review the concept of sustainability which, in official government documents, has often lost any reference to the bodies of those living beings that should benefit from the same transition.
Naming the bodies means restoring centrality to a truly challenging objective in the ecological transition: no living being must be excluded from the benefits of the ‘green’ revolution, no being and no place should be overlooked, in this revolution there must be only winners and no losers. Restoring the value to the bodies also means changing the language of official documents. The fight against inequalities and the equal access to common goods also requires rethinking the energy transition strategy. Scientists who have managed to combine ecology and growth, the protection of natural resources and development, have taught us that the only true ecological transition comes through the recognition of a fundamental principle: energy must be produced as close as possible to the place where it will be used.
Moreover, it is necessary to add that energy production must be congruent with the communities’ health, with the minimization of waste production; that the cheapest energy source for us is the sun and that the efficient use of available resources requires that the heat comes from thermal energy and not from electricity. Hence, a good incentive for the energy communities and individual consumption. But let’s substantiate these words with truly sustainable projects.
Each house will have to be renovated or built in a way to achieve zero consumption and contain the equipment to produce energy in a rational way; it is necessary to finance research on the production of construction materials from waste, preferably organic waste. It is necessary to give centrality to the lives and re-propose this component by rethinking it in terms of equal access to drinking water, to a healthy, living and safe territory, to safeguard the habitats that guarantee the maintenance of terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity. Ultimately a “green” revolution, to be defined as such, must also be democratic, fair and respectful of the bodies and the differences between living beings. It has to deal with the concept of entropy and with that of limits: the greater the number of transformations that a system undergoes to pass from an initial to a final state, the greater the waste of resources that this transition entails.
A real ecological revolution must start from these principles, and support and encourage small communities in the search for self-sustaining practices, reduction of consumption, rational use of energy and of non-renewable resources. It must give priority to short energy transport networks, short production chains; it must support the life cycles of the earth rather than contrast them; it must fight the drought and floods by increasing the self-regenerative capacity of the earth, protecting the permeability of the soil, the power of plants to reduce global warming and the natural biodiversity of ecosystems.
To read the original version of the article in Italian:
