Expat woman trying to change patriarchal Italy
Expat woman trying to change patriarchal Italy
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Last edited by eurobrat on May 24th, 2013, 4:26 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Didn't women and old folks comprise the bulk of Berlusconi's voters..
Anyways, I think Italian women are far happier than women in America, at least the use of anti-depressants is far lower, so they should be teaching Anglo feminists a thing or two about how to act like women, not the other way around.
Check out this advert pushing miscegenation with Arabs and niggers (as if the Moor invasion didn't f**k over southern Europe enough the first time). The real problem of course is that once girls go through that bimbo/whore transformation, no one can stand to be with them except fellow lowest common denominator scum like niggers and "Jersey Shore" types.
Anyways, I think Italian women are far happier than women in America, at least the use of anti-depressants is far lower, so they should be teaching Anglo feminists a thing or two about how to act like women, not the other way around.
Check out this advert pushing miscegenation with Arabs and niggers (as if the Moor invasion didn't f**k over southern Europe enough the first time). The real problem of course is that once girls go through that bimbo/whore transformation, no one can stand to be with them except fellow lowest common denominator scum like niggers and "Jersey Shore" types.
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abcdavid01
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abcdavid01
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eurobrat nice avatar, I see italy is treating you well ... I know this is off-topic but; a lot of italians use hand gestures when they're speaking... after living there for a while is it possible to pick up on what they're saying even if u don't know too much italian due to all the hand gestures & body language?
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publicduende
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OK, you will probably take my rant on this as truthful as most of you know (and some of you hate) my take on gender equality and the need for empowering women at the social and professional levels, blah blah.
Yet, I can't discount what the OP author said solely on the basis she is a foreigner. She claims she has been long enough in Italy, possibly one or two years, working for a multinational, and I couldn't justify such a string of partial and skewed information on a good faith basis.
First of all, women in the Italian workplace are not discriminated against men. To paraphrase the wit of one of our stand-up comedians, all Italians are discriminated on an equal basis.
1) The OP author is relaying episodes of backstabbing, false promises and ensuing frustrations as if it were something exclusive to the female world. A bit too much of a victim mentality there. The vast, overwhelming majority of Italian employees go through those kinds of issues, if not worse ones. There are simply not enough jobs in Italy to fulfil everybody's expectations, be them high-flying men or high-flying women. This is why so many of us, including myself and scores of young women I have personally met or heard of, go abroad to put their professional lives on a better track.
2) When operating in Italy most large companies and multinationals, national and foreign, have to face one of the world's most business-unfriendly environment, with ridiculous amounts of red tape at the national and EU levels, high labour costs and little or no tax incentives, as well as an economy that's been stuttering for the past 15 years. I guess US people could relate to me on at least the first two items. An employee that earns 100 of salary will probably cost between 250 and 300 after all taxes, pension, social and health benefits are accounted for. This is probably sufficient to explain why large companies are reluctant to hire new people in general, whether they are men or women.
I can assume some of the OP's rage comes from the fact companies know that the typical Italian late 20-something woman will spend one, perhaps two maternity leaves which the company will have to fully fund. Companies who refuse to hire women on the basis they will have to pay for 6, 9 or 18 months of non-productive time do have a point, and while it's discriminatory and unfair to reject a potentially good female candidate on that count, no regulation exists that sets the success criteria. This is true even for the UK or the US. In other words, neither in Italy nor in the majority of other countries, there's no way to know whether a candidate is rejected because they're women, or because they're less fit for purpose than another male candidate. But, of course, we had Berlusconi and his sexual shenanigans as proxy evidence, so we and our HR departments (many of which are managed by women anyway) must be doing it for an overtly sexist reason.
By the same token, given the recent Jimmy Savile scandal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savi ... xual_abuse), would I be right to assume I would be unfit for the post of TV host at the BBC because I'm not a serial child abuser?
3) Something not many people know, including the OP author. Not dissimilarly from France, and ever since the Austrians and the Spaniards were occupying us, employers maintain the notion that engineering graduates are the highest, smarter and most flexible workforce that could be hired, trained and invested on, and nothing ever comes close to them. This could have a factual basis, as engineering degrees in at least 50% of the Italian universities and polytechnics (engineering schools) are excruciatingly hard to complete, or it could be down to a glorified stereotype that nobody ever had the guts to challenge.
Either way, since it so happens that Italy abounds with excellent engineering graduates and much fewer high quality jobs, whether on a scientific/technical or business/management track, most companies feel like playing safe by singling out the top-marks engineers and give them the job, or earmarking them for a fast career track or a promotion. I can tell this first hand because I am an engineer myself and have worked in Italy for a total of about 6 years.
Now, it so happens that women are under-represented in engineering courses. We're talking 20%, maybe 30% of a standard cohort. I wouldn't be surprised if the percentage of women in high-flying positions in any large company, say, concerned with science, technology or management, reflected that balance. On the sunny side, I don't know a single young woman with an Italian engineering degree who is not employed and hitting the glass ceiling while trying to move to the upper echelons. Not a single one. As a corollary of that, I also know scores of young women with excellent careers in investment banks, corporates, large consultancies, software house and R&D facilities with degrees in computer science, mathematics or physics.
4) Many Italian young women have lots of common sense, and (although I can't count on it 100%) would rather find a balance between their need to feel professionally fulfilled and that of forming a happy, harmonious family with their boyfriends or husbands. Perhaps out of this, many of them voluntarily choose jobs that will give them enough time to spend with their families, or perhaps doing housework as the OP implies. This explains very well why the vast majority of school teachers are women.
5) This thing about the Gender Gap Report. Most of the bad marks Italy got are related to the number of women in the workforce and the issue of wage parity. Well, touche and touche. Italy, especially Southern Italy, is your typical quintessential housewife country. On one side they love to extoll the virtues of Italian Moms as the best in the world: dedicated wives, tender moms, excellent chefs etc. Where do these qualities come from, if not from the tendency of women to stay at home with the kids and the house to mind? If a woman has a good education and wants to use it to kick some ass in a profession, be it. First time on this forum, I will state that the converse holds true: if a woman chooses to put her talents at the service of her own family and household, be it! I have yet to hear a single married Italian man complain about his wife staying at home to raise two or three morally and emotionally well-rounded, confident boys or girls. We don't go as far as India, where a man not having to rely on his wife's salary is seen as a sign of high socio-economic status. Yet, unlike many Anglo societies, being a housewife is definitely not frowned upon as a lesser, degrading social role.
Yet, again, there are some revealing aspects. As per 4), a large number of women are employed in teaching jobs, where they work a standard 25 hours week (typically Monday to Saturday, 8:00 to 13:30). It's only obvious that a teacher wage in a public school is significantly lower than that of a 40-hours job in a private company (90% of schools in Italy are public). Another point to consider is the sheer size of the so-called "submerged economy". Close to 30% of the total number of jobs in Italy are undeclared to the government. We're talking about more than 3 million people working full-time jobs without a contract, a cash in hand salary and no social and health benefits. A percentage ranging from 60% and 70% of these jobs go to women, who often have to accept them not because they're inferior beings, but simply because there's nothing better on the buffet table to grab. How less skewed against women would the GGR figure be if this massive pool of active female workforce were to be accounted for?
Yet, I can't discount what the OP author said solely on the basis she is a foreigner. She claims she has been long enough in Italy, possibly one or two years, working for a multinational, and I couldn't justify such a string of partial and skewed information on a good faith basis.
First of all, women in the Italian workplace are not discriminated against men. To paraphrase the wit of one of our stand-up comedians, all Italians are discriminated on an equal basis.
1) The OP author is relaying episodes of backstabbing, false promises and ensuing frustrations as if it were something exclusive to the female world. A bit too much of a victim mentality there. The vast, overwhelming majority of Italian employees go through those kinds of issues, if not worse ones. There are simply not enough jobs in Italy to fulfil everybody's expectations, be them high-flying men or high-flying women. This is why so many of us, including myself and scores of young women I have personally met or heard of, go abroad to put their professional lives on a better track.
2) When operating in Italy most large companies and multinationals, national and foreign, have to face one of the world's most business-unfriendly environment, with ridiculous amounts of red tape at the national and EU levels, high labour costs and little or no tax incentives, as well as an economy that's been stuttering for the past 15 years. I guess US people could relate to me on at least the first two items. An employee that earns 100 of salary will probably cost between 250 and 300 after all taxes, pension, social and health benefits are accounted for. This is probably sufficient to explain why large companies are reluctant to hire new people in general, whether they are men or women.
I can assume some of the OP's rage comes from the fact companies know that the typical Italian late 20-something woman will spend one, perhaps two maternity leaves which the company will have to fully fund. Companies who refuse to hire women on the basis they will have to pay for 6, 9 or 18 months of non-productive time do have a point, and while it's discriminatory and unfair to reject a potentially good female candidate on that count, no regulation exists that sets the success criteria. This is true even for the UK or the US. In other words, neither in Italy nor in the majority of other countries, there's no way to know whether a candidate is rejected because they're women, or because they're less fit for purpose than another male candidate. But, of course, we had Berlusconi and his sexual shenanigans as proxy evidence, so we and our HR departments (many of which are managed by women anyway) must be doing it for an overtly sexist reason.
By the same token, given the recent Jimmy Savile scandal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savi ... xual_abuse), would I be right to assume I would be unfit for the post of TV host at the BBC because I'm not a serial child abuser?
3) Something not many people know, including the OP author. Not dissimilarly from France, and ever since the Austrians and the Spaniards were occupying us, employers maintain the notion that engineering graduates are the highest, smarter and most flexible workforce that could be hired, trained and invested on, and nothing ever comes close to them. This could have a factual basis, as engineering degrees in at least 50% of the Italian universities and polytechnics (engineering schools) are excruciatingly hard to complete, or it could be down to a glorified stereotype that nobody ever had the guts to challenge.
Either way, since it so happens that Italy abounds with excellent engineering graduates and much fewer high quality jobs, whether on a scientific/technical or business/management track, most companies feel like playing safe by singling out the top-marks engineers and give them the job, or earmarking them for a fast career track or a promotion. I can tell this first hand because I am an engineer myself and have worked in Italy for a total of about 6 years.
Now, it so happens that women are under-represented in engineering courses. We're talking 20%, maybe 30% of a standard cohort. I wouldn't be surprised if the percentage of women in high-flying positions in any large company, say, concerned with science, technology or management, reflected that balance. On the sunny side, I don't know a single young woman with an Italian engineering degree who is not employed and hitting the glass ceiling while trying to move to the upper echelons. Not a single one. As a corollary of that, I also know scores of young women with excellent careers in investment banks, corporates, large consultancies, software house and R&D facilities with degrees in computer science, mathematics or physics.
4) Many Italian young women have lots of common sense, and (although I can't count on it 100%) would rather find a balance between their need to feel professionally fulfilled and that of forming a happy, harmonious family with their boyfriends or husbands. Perhaps out of this, many of them voluntarily choose jobs that will give them enough time to spend with their families, or perhaps doing housework as the OP implies. This explains very well why the vast majority of school teachers are women.
5) This thing about the Gender Gap Report. Most of the bad marks Italy got are related to the number of women in the workforce and the issue of wage parity. Well, touche and touche. Italy, especially Southern Italy, is your typical quintessential housewife country. On one side they love to extoll the virtues of Italian Moms as the best in the world: dedicated wives, tender moms, excellent chefs etc. Where do these qualities come from, if not from the tendency of women to stay at home with the kids and the house to mind? If a woman has a good education and wants to use it to kick some ass in a profession, be it. First time on this forum, I will state that the converse holds true: if a woman chooses to put her talents at the service of her own family and household, be it! I have yet to hear a single married Italian man complain about his wife staying at home to raise two or three morally and emotionally well-rounded, confident boys or girls. We don't go as far as India, where a man not having to rely on his wife's salary is seen as a sign of high socio-economic status. Yet, unlike many Anglo societies, being a housewife is definitely not frowned upon as a lesser, degrading social role.
Yet, again, there are some revealing aspects. As per 4), a large number of women are employed in teaching jobs, where they work a standard 25 hours week (typically Monday to Saturday, 8:00 to 13:30). It's only obvious that a teacher wage in a public school is significantly lower than that of a 40-hours job in a private company (90% of schools in Italy are public). Another point to consider is the sheer size of the so-called "submerged economy". Close to 30% of the total number of jobs in Italy are undeclared to the government. We're talking about more than 3 million people working full-time jobs without a contract, a cash in hand salary and no social and health benefits. A percentage ranging from 60% and 70% of these jobs go to women, who often have to accept them not because they're inferior beings, but simply because there's nothing better on the buffet table to grab. How less skewed against women would the GGR figure be if this massive pool of active female workforce were to be accounted for?
Last edited by publicduende on November 26th, 2012, 1:17 am, edited 2 times in total.
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publicduende
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Sorry to hijack the direct question. Just to post this, could be useful to purpose.Renata wrote:eurobrat nice avatar, I see italy is treating you well ... I know this is off-topic but; a lot of italians use hand gestures when they're speaking... after living there for a while is it possible to pick up on what they're saying even if u don't know too much italian due to all the hand gestures & body language?
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abcdavid01
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Is that true about engineering? I became a certified draftsman in high school and I was taking Industrial Design courses in college before dropping out. I don't regret it and am happy developing income online, but it's good to know that's true. Actually I heard there was a glut of engineers, but maybe it's just something to come that isn't reflected in the market yet. Oh man, how cool it would be to work for Ferrari or Vespa or Ducatti. Ah, but a job's still a job. People who are truly happy with their jobs, in line with the tao as it were, they might as well be mythological.
i have had very very good experiences with italian people. inluding women especailly with those funny videos of the black guy coming out of the laundry. women in europe consider black men to be exotic.
italian women are very very happy women. they like men. Enjoy the company of men and are very inclusive with everyone around.
a patriarchy makes women happy. a feminist society makes women very unhappy. go figure.
italian women are very very happy women. they like men. Enjoy the company of men and are very inclusive with everyone around.
a patriarchy makes women happy. a feminist society makes women very unhappy. go figure.
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abcdavid01
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- Posts: 1579
- Joined: November 17th, 2012, 10:52 pm
- Location: On the run
Well yeah. They keep having to pretend they're being oppressed. They are in never ending battles for freedom against fictitious enemies. Feminism is an unwinable war.
Last edited by abcdavid01 on November 24th, 2012, 6:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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