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A few months ago, Veronica (the first name has been changed to preserve her privacy) lost her mother. This loss left her with great pain and “some money”. Together with a bank loan, this money was enough to get out of the nightmare of constantly increasing rents, roommates who are not always friendly and the pressure of possible expulsions.
“It’s now or never,” she told herself, and for weeks she combed through advertisements, set appointment and visited apartments. Until she found the one that was just for her.
Her permanent job of 20 hours a week in the public sector and her part-time job in the private sector with a fixed-term contract, seemed sufficient guarantees to pay the monthly loan instalments.
And yet no! The bank’s refusal was accompanied by a question from the employee who left her speechless: “Don’t you have a husband?”. So, is it possible that in 2022, in Italy, a man still provides better guarantees than a woman to obtain a loan?
This is the starting point of our conversation with Giovanna Badalassi, economist, researcher and expert in parity policies – these instruments through which public administration tries to analyze and predict the impact of investments on reducing the gender gap. An impact that continues to be well below the principles of equality between men and women guaranteed by the Constitution.
In 2015, with Federica Gentile, another researcher, Giovanna Badalassi founded a blog entitled, with the irony that characterizes them, Ladynomics, accompanied by the subtitle “For a queen economy[1].”
Ladynomics scrutinizes national and international measures implemented to improve the condition of women – starting with employment policies or those aimed at encouraging the setting up of women’s businesses – analyzes the impact of economic crises through the prism of gender and finance, presents studies and research. This whole work is nourished by a careful analysis of data and statistics, on the basis of which the two researchers also develop concrete political proposals.
“Contrary to popular belief, women have always had a relationship with money,” states Badalassi, who condemns the “totally outdated” comment passed by the Roman bank employee Veronica dealt with.
“But the relationship of women to money is different from that of men. It is a relationship that I personally define as “marital”: with rare exceptions, it begins when you get married and start to manage the household income to do the shopping and pay the bills, i.e., to ensure the daily well-being of all the family components. Making ends meet, making the most of the money you have, negotiating the best value for money: these are things that women know how to do very well. They have been doing this for centuries and are educated from their most early childhood in this sense.”
“On the other hand, the relationship of men to money is of the “patrimonial” type. It is related to the acquisition of goods, to their accumulation, to their multiplication. It is therefore a type of relationship that copes better with the abstraction of finance, of the stock market, where the goods that have to be accumulated are figures in bank accounts, goods that are completely dematerialized, pure flows of money,” continues Badalassi.
Ladynomics has thus always illustrated the different ways of thinking and managing money that women have with the firm conviction that this modality, which is “more of an accounting modality where you have to make ends meet, and where the power purchase is measured in concrete goods,” also has an economic value in addition to its social value. This is also fundamental for the GDP.
“When we set up Ladynomics and started to discuss economy from the point of view of its impact on the lives of women, we were absolute pioneers,” recalls Badalassi. “What we were writing then seemed totally new,” she adds.
This is despite decades of feminist literature which, since campaigns for paid domestic work, has highlighted the economic value of women’s unpaid work. Called reproductive work, this work continues to weigh heavily upon the shoulders of women.
Today, two and a half years after the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic which has had much heavier consequences for women, “the awareness that the economy is not neutral, that it has a different impact on men and women, and that the life of women, including that which takes place in the domestic space, has its own economic value, has developed enormously,” argues Badalassi, “and is widespread in all walks of life, not only within the elite of aware and committed women on the public scene for whom our blog was initially intended.”
The Beijing Conference of 1995 (fourth United Nations Conference on Women) was the culmination of a global movement which imposed the concept of gender equality everywhere – a sort of oxymoron seeking to hold together the need to overcome existing discrimination between men and women and to recognize the diversity of bodies, desires and gender roles. So much so that today, diversity has also become a value for companies.
“Recent studies on diversity,” says Badalassi, “have shown that when it is women who manage purchases on behalf of companies, there is a greater propensity to avoid risky investments, presenting high risk margins, or those that are not fully viable. In addition, women tend to improve transparency, respect for rules and legality, values that are very important in global markets.”
“The awareness that the economy is not neutral, that it has a different impact on men and women, and that the life of women has its own economic value, has developed enormously”
On Ladynomics, Badalassi had already presented a study by Transparency International showing that, “by crossing data on the gender gap and corruption, the latter decreases in countries where there is greater equality between men and women, or in those where the percentage of women at the top of public administration and at the head of companies is higher.”
“It perfectly reflects the different cultural approach with which boys and girls are educated from an early age,” explains Badalassi. For the former, we value the ability to take precedence over others, to win, also through ruse and using people for their own ends. Including getting rich. Besides, in the language of finance, people are called “human resources.” For women, it is the opposite: money is an instrument, the purpose for which it is used is the well-being of people, which is also guaranteed by respect for the rules.”
It is precisely for this reason that “women are generally good public managers, when they manage to take the lead of a municipality or a region,” adds Badalassi. However, in Italy, female mayors barely represent 15%, that is, 1,154 women out of 7,707 men.
As is often the case in situations where women are discriminated againt, the responsibility is attributed to the women themselves: to their lack of self-confidence or lack of skills. This occurs despite the fact that, as from 2016, women accounted for 51.4% of graduates in economics and business, as documented in a research conducted by Maria Corsi for the Italian Economics Society.
In 2018, the Committee for the Programming and Coordination of Financial Education Activities, set up in 2017 in the framework of the collaboration between the Ministry of the Economy and the MIUR (Ministry of Instruction, University and research) had published a guide, in collaboration with the magazine Donna moderna (Modern Woman), to enable women to “test their financial knowledge in a few minutes”, and to explain “why it is important for women to know how to manage their money instead of delegating this activity to men.”
We are also witnessing the proliferation of courses in the field of “financial education for women” provided by various associations, often in collaboration with banking institutes.
“These initiatives are interesting, recognizes Badalassi, but they reflect an approach strongly centered on individual initiative and private capital, which are not enough to encourage systemic change. Adequate public measures and a greater presence of women in decision-making places are also required so as to create new role models for young women and to trigger a cultural change in which female talents and abilities would be recognized and valued, instead of women claiming that they adapt to male standards and models,” argues the researcher.
After all, this is why Ladynomics was set up.
