On 8 February 2006, the Commissione Lavoro della Camera (the Italian Parliament’s Labor Review Board) amended the federal law to provide for maternity leave coverage through INPS for dirigenti (dirigente is the highest contractual hiring level in Italy and generally refers to senior- or executive-level managers). This may sound like an innocuous change, but what does it really mean for women? For those of you who’ve never taken maternity leave under Italian law, let me give you some background. In general, Italian maternity law has been fairly protective of women employees – 5 months paid leave at 80% of the base pay was paid by INPS (and generally the company contributed the remaining 20%), with the guarantee of returning to the same position or one of equal level of responsibility. Not a bad deal over all, unless, of course, you were a dirigente…Before February 8, any maternity leave time taken by a dirigente was fully paid by the employer. This meant that the company continued to pay at least 80% of the salary (many companies paid 100%) for the five months of maternity leave. Think about it – what do most companies do when a female employee goes on maternity leave? They hire a temporary replacement to fill in for that period. Where do they get the funding to pay for the temp? From the savings generated by the salary they’re NOT paying to the woman on leave. But in the case of a dirigente, in order to bring in someone to cover a managerial role, a company would incur an incremental expense: they would pay the salary of both the dirigente on leave AND the salary of the temporary manager.

What was the result of this situation? One more reason NOT to hire/promote a woman, particularly a woman of child-bearing years, to a dirigente position in the first place.

When managers of human resources, hiring and finance look at a woman applying for a job, the first thing they see is cost, the second is lost work time, and last but not least, the skills that the woman will actually bring to the firm. Forgive my cynicism, but I’ve lived it myself. When I first arrived in Italy in 1999, I interviewed for a dirigente position for which the job description read like a photocopy of my CV. But the divisional director interviewing me wasn’t really interested in my skills. He wanted to know more important things: how old was I? when was I getting married? how long did I plan to wait before having children? As an American who started her career under the protection of the US Equal Opportunities Act, I was outraged and insulted by these questions, which unfortunately are standard and completely legal under Italian law. Fortunately, the British hiring manager WAS interested in my skills, and so I was indeed offered the job.

Ironically, the Italian manager for whom I worked at that company and who saw me through 2 of my 3 pregnancies was also willing, without ever questioning my commitment or ability to perform, to hire me for a key position in his new company just this last September. This was after I’d spent a fruitless and very depressing year searching for a new dirigente position. The low point of that job search came when the human resources manager from a company that espouses “Employee Work/Life Balance” as part of its corporate image asked me “But don’t you think a dirigente position would be too impegnativa for a woman with three children?”. Needless to say, I was NOT offered that job.

I’m not the only one who’s had this type of experience. Recently a friend of mine was promoted to dirigente after several years of performing the same work for which other MEN in her company already had the title. What took so long in her case? Well, she did take two maternity leaves in the course of three years. And, strangely enough, she was promoted to dirigente shortly after it became clear to her company that she was done having children. Coincidence? Possibly, but it might just have been part of an overall cost-saving plan.

Of course, each woman has her own perspective, and each company shapes that perspective through their human resources policies. One Italian dirigente and PWA member I spoke to told me that this law will have little impact on her company because that corporation already has true equal-opportunity hiring and promotion policies and that female dirigenti were supported and encouraged to return to full-time work because they already represented an “investment” on the part of the firm. Another saw this new law as a positive change for the next generation of female managers ready to take the step up to dirigente level.

Yes, we still need to work on convincing companies that women have the commitment to reach the highest levels of corporate management; however, this change in the law means that the Italian government recognizes the issue and is now working to eliminate the barriers that keep women from reaching those levels. That, in itself, is a very positive sign for women at all levels of business in Italy.

Lynn Chasson
PWA Board Member