Ha l'economia italiana beneficiato dall'inclusione della donna durante il ventesimo secolo?

For centuries, women have been pigeonholed to roles in society that covered mainly domestic tasks and family related activities. This is strictly linked to a preponderant idea that has intrinsically accompanied humanity for centuries. Even the ancient Greeks and Romans believed that men were supposed to be the family’s breadwinners, and this school of thought latched on to European societies up until very recently. In this thesis, space and time will play a major significant role; I will analyze how the inclusion of women to work during the 20th Century positively affected the Italian economy. Nonetheless, this analysis will also help us trace a blueprint of how other aspects of life, culture and society have been modified as a consequence. Before we start our deep dive, we need to understand that the women’s adverse relationship with ‘breadwinning labor’ throughout history cannot be reduced or simplified to mere misogynistic notions or religious believes. Contrary to what most people consider nowadays is the main cause of women’s delayed incursion in the breadwinning labor world, sexism is not the principal motive of why the doors to this reality remained closed for centuries. Of course, misogynistic cultural traits have highly influenced how women and work coexisted for hundreds of years; however, reducing such a complex matter to a simple and vain stereotype like such is not only wrong, but also restrictive. Up until the first industrial revolution (and even then during the first few decades), the vast majority of jobs required significant physical effort. Furthermore, in cases in which this was not true, jobs required specific types of education or instruction (that many times were only available to rich males). Therefore, we can say that the relationship that we want to analyze in this thesis is a very complex one, in which multiple elements are key to understand how and why women were finally recognized as a vital element of the economy only until the 20th Century.