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CHIARA SARACENO
The Ambivalent Familism of
the Italian Welfare State
Welfare states have developed as ways of assuming public
responsibilities for the conditions of reproduction. Therefore, they
interact with families and contribute to shaping the particular form
of the gender division of labor both inside and outside of families.
In this capacity, they frame a significant part of the material, jurid-
ical, and cultural conditions in which negotiations concerning gen-
der and family roles and relations occur.
The shape of the Italian welfare state has been deeply influenced
by assumptions about the family and its gender and intergenera-
tional responsibilities: the family is both an economic unit in which
there are dependents (e.g., children, wives, parents, and disabled
adults) and "family heads" who redistribute income, and a care-
giving unit in which there are also dependents and those (i.e., wom-
en, wives, and adult daughters) who "redistribute" care. Within the
family, as defined by welfare state provisions, married women are
expected to be the main care providers for family members and kin
and therefore, at least in part, economically dependent on their
husbands. At the same time, most of the caring needs of individu-
als—children, infirm older and disabled persons, but also healthy
adult men—are defined as best served by the caring of wives, moth-
ers,
and/or daughters.
The welfare state follows this definition to such an extent that
even those social services which exist in this area are often defined
Social Politics Spring 1994
O 1994 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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The Familism of the Italian Welfare State • 61
interchangeably as "services for the family," "services for women,"
and "services for children" (or the disabled, etc.). As a matter of
fact, and somewhat paradoxically, women may be defined (if not
denounced) as dependent on the state when they ask for, or use,
services for their children. Older people's dependency is labeled as
such more clearly when they use public money and services than
when they are cared for within household and kin boundaries. De-
pendency within and on one's own family and kin for money or
care is expected and positive, although not all forms of individual
dependency are formally acknowledged in the same way: men's de-
pendence on women's caring for them and their children is perceived
more as a vested right (which might become a shortcoming when
they are not married), while husbands' responsibility toward their
"dependents" is acknowledged in many labor policies which privi-
lege "family heads" with regard to decisions on hiring and layoffs.
On the other hand, children's and older people's dependence on
women's caring provides few rights for women, apart from mater-
nity leaves for working women. Rather, that dependence makes
women appear as irresponsible or unduly dependent on the state—
or even as rendering their family "dependent on the state" (e.g.,
Donati 1981)—when they try to redistribute "their" care-giving
work.
The family, with its gendered and generational division of respon-
sibility and labor, as well as its asymmetrical structure of interde-
pendencies, is therefore the explicit partner of the Italian welfare
state (Balbo 1977; Balbo 1984). In contrast to other welfare state
regimes that also stress the importance of the family (Langan and
Ostner 1991), the Italian state's emphasis on the family has not al-
ways resulted in policies that either strengthen the (male) family
head or materially support the "traditional family" (e.g., paying
higher child allowances either to the mother or father). Rather, ref-
erence to family responsibilities and solidarity serves to ration ac-
cess to benefits and restrict individual rights. Thus, at-home pro-
fessional care for invalid older people is provided only on the basis
of a test of both economic means and the unavailability of a care-
giving woman within the kinship network. All tests of means are
household- and sometimes kin-based (e.g., a separated woman with
no economic means might be referred by social assistance to her
distant brother, who by law should offer her economic support).
1
At the same time, many income support measures targeted at the
less privileged groups and regional areas can be interpreted as a
means of acknowledging that many families cannot really have an
economic "head," and therefore, must be "dependent" on the state.
The way the state defines family responsibilities and interdepen-
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62 • Saraceno
dencies determines to a great degree when and how use of public
resources is defined as dependence on the state. The longstanding
debate about the specific status of personal social services (i.e., car-
ing services) is a case in point: insofar as these services are defined
as surrogates for an inadequate family (i.e., a care-giving mother
or daughter), rather than as services granting individual social rights
irrespective of family membership, they are likely to be perceived
as creating dependency. Analogously, the lack of universal unem-
ployment benefits, while fragmenting the unemployed into many
categories, exposes the weakest among them (all those looking for
their first job) to both the risk of receiving nothing and of being
labeled as inadequate and thus dependent on public assistance.
From this point of view, we see a kind of pendulum in the re-
cent history of the Italian welfare state: during the seventies a num-
ber of caring needs were at least partially defined as individual so-
cial rights (health care, day care and education for preschool
children, and basic education); in the nineties the increasing recourse
to family-based means testing has tended to weaken individual rights
in favor of family rights and (compulsory) family solidarity, at the
same time relabeling as "dependencies" what had been previously
defined as individual social rights. Exemplary of this shift is the re-
form of the National Health Service approved in 1992 (discussed
later in this article).
General Features of the Italian Welfare State
According to the Italian Constitution, Italy is a republic based
on labor. Older or disabled workers have a right to live according
to their previous standard of living, while nonworkers must be
granted "the minimum necessary for survival." Full citizenship,
therefore, is reached through participation in paid work, although
it is not at all certain that having a job is a citizenship right.
In the Constitution, the disparity in rights for workers and non-
workers is expressed not only in different pension rights of older
persons even at the minimum level (the social assistance pension is
much lower than the minimum work pension), but also in the frag-
mented, discretionary protection granted to nonworkers. At the
same time, the Constitution protects the family as a "natural soci-
ety" and a "natural right"—so much so that successive legislation
has established the principle that children have a right to an ade-
quate family, through adoption if they have none or foster care if
they have a temporarily inadequate one.
The Constitution stipulates that men and women, husbands and
wives,
are equal in the family, "granted that the unity of the fami-
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The Familism of the Italian Welfare State • 63
ly is not hampered." A principle of hierarchy between the sexes is
therefore inscribed in Italy's fundamental law, pointing to a possi-
ble conflict between individual rights (of women) and family and
community rights, to be resolved in favor of the latter. The unity
of the family—the caring it must provide in the "republic based on
work"—is based on women's willingness to reduce their individual
rights in favor of their husbands' rights. This, in turn, reduces wom-
en's opportunities to secure social rights based on paid work. Wom-
en should be dependent on their husbands' incomes because their
husbands and children are dependent on their care-giving.
While this analysis of the Constitution is brief and incomplete,
it is important to identify the constitutional framework of social
rights in Italy. As in most countries, social rights are generally linked
to working status: to both the fact of working for pay and specific
job location in the occupational structure and in the social securi-
ty system. Not having a paid job constitutes a barrier to access to
other rights: public or subsidized housing, emergency lodging when
evicted, low cost loans, and so on (Saraceno 1992a). Subordinate-
ly, access to social rights is granted through a family relationship
(as a wife or child) to someone having such working status.
The Italian welfare state developed during the seventies and ear-
ly eighties, approaching average European levels of protection.
2
During this period of development, the social services (kindergar-
tens,
day care, after school activities, at-home care for older per-
sons) experienced maximum expansion, and important legislation
concerning gender roles and the family was approved (e.g., divorce,
abortion, extension of coverage for working mothers, and paren-
tal leaves available also to working fathers).
Social analysts define the Italian welfare state as a "clientelistic"
variant of the "particularistic-meritocratic" social state typical of
continental Europe (Paci 1984; Paci 1989; Ferrera 1985; Ascoli
1986;
Esping-Andersen 1990): the state is heavily shaped by the
control and negotiation of political parties and trade unions, which
in the past used social expenditures as a means to gain consensus.
Social analysts attribute the lack of autonomy of civil society with
regard to the state in Italy as "clientelistic dependency" (Farneti
1978;
Tarrow 1979; Paci 1989), and the Italian case as one of "par-
ty government" (Rusconi and Scamuzzi 1981).
3
This does not mean that there are not universalistic measures:
compulsory education and, to a large extent, high school educa-
tion (which in Italy is not compulsory) are free in Italy. Public (state
or local government organized) or local government subsidized kin-
dergartens for children three to five years old
4
cover about 90 per-
cent of the youngsters in this age bracket. Even university educa-
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64 • Saraceno
tion is inexpensive, and some analysts interpret this as perverse re-
distribution, insofar as the costs of university education are sup-
ported by all tax payers, but particularly by the large majority
whose children do not attend the university.
Aside from education, however, universalism in Italy developed
belatedly and weakly. M. Ferrera points out that although discus-
sion of pension reform is recurrent in Italian history, particularly
in republican history, the Italian pension system is still one of the
most stratified and internally diversified (1993). Even the quite rad-
ical reform finally approved in the fall of 1992 has not unified the
different systems, and there still is not a universal basic old age pen-
sion. Instead, there is a so-called social pension which is about half
of the minimum work pension; it is means-tested on the basis of
family income and is paid to those (mostly women) who did not
"earn" a work pension.
Canceling the many diversified systems that had developed over
more than a century, the single universalistic reform of the seven-
ties introduced the National Health System in 1978. This system
made health care a citizenship right that was granted to all Italian
citizens as well as to all foreigners legally residing in the country/
A variety of public or publicly financed social services also de-
veloped in that period, with the aims of both supporting families
(women) in meeting the caring needs of their dependents and of
granting individuals some degree of care and resources (intellectual
stimuli, leisure and sports activities, etc.) not exclusively linked to
individual and family resources. To be sure, controversy around the
social rights feature of these services continued; while many con-
servatives denounced the "state intrusion in private life," many left-
ists overplayed the social rights dimensions of services which in re-
ality were often undeveloped and scarce or used some explicit or
implicit criteria for screening prospective users.
Personal social services and social assistance in Italy are a respon-
sibility of municipal governments, which finance them out of funds
received from the central government. Municipalities may or may
not offer particular services; these decisions are based on their anal-
ysis not only of "need," but of local lobbies and political priori-
ties.
Exclusive local responsibility for offering services, therefore,
has an important consequence for citizens: there are substantial dif-
ferences both in the quality and quantity of services available in a
given locale. This is particularly true in the case of social services
such as day care for children under three, at-home care for older
or disabled persons, school cafeterias, and family clinics—that is,
services that most directly assist (women's) family work. For ex-
ample, although the fertility rate is higher in the South than in the
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The Familism of the Italian Welfare State • 65
Center-North and the proportion of preschool children in the pop-
ulation is higher, until the early eighties there were no day care cen-
ters in Sicily, and kindergartens, although their number had risen
substantially since the early seventies, are still fewer and offer on
average a reduced schedule. In addition, school cafeterias, at-home
care for older persons, services for the disabled, and services for
drug addicts are considerably less available in the South than in the
Center-North. This, in turn, makes individuals more dependent on
their family and kin for meeting their needs.
Local residence in Italy makes a great difference not only in terms
of job opportunities, but also in terms of the acknowledgment and
accessibility of social rights. Territorial differentiation in Italy makes
it difficult to delineate any "average" description of processes and
situations. Many social analysts maintain that the interplay of lo-
cal political and social traditions, economic development, and for-
mal and informal systems of social protection give rise to distinc-
tive social formations, which cannot be analyzed along a continuum,
but must be understood in their specificity and interplay. This does
not mean that these disparities and inequalities remain the same over
time or that the general regional divisions used in routine presen-
tation of data (North, Center, and South, or North-West, North-
East, Center, South, and Isles) are internally homogeneous. Reforms
introduced in late 1992, aimed at decreasing the heavy public debt,
have reduced the scope of the universalism of the health system and
increased geographical differentiation in the provision and cost of
social services.
As a consequence of its clientelistic-particularistic characteristics,
the Italian system of social protection has four specific features.
First, different measures of income support have been continually
privileged over not only the provision of services but also over a
full employment policy since the postwar years (with the notable
exception of the seventies when most of the social service system
was developed [Paci 1984; Ascoli 1986; Artoni and Ranci Ortigosa
1989]).
This in turn has led to the second feature, a steady reli-
ance on the family and its gender division of labor and intergener-
ational solidarity for the provision of caring work and services as
well as for the integration of inadequate income support measures.
The family is the explicit partner of social policies in Italy, although
this partnership has been emphasized differently over the years. A
third feature is the wide differentiation not only between provisions
for workers and nonworkers, but among various categories of work-
ers and "people in need." There are differences in rights and cov-
erage between state employees and private sector employees, and,
within the latter, between those employed in large industries and
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The Familism of the Italian Welfare State • 67
those who work for small firms. Differences occur not only in the
coverage for unemployment, but also, at least up to fall 1992, in
regulations concerning pensions (Castellino 1976; Commissione per
PAnalisi delPImpatto Sociale 1990). Since women and men are likely
to be located in different sectors of the labor market, they general-
ly receive different kinds of benefits even though explicit formal
gender discrimination in the labor market has been banned since
1961.
Women are more likely to be concentrated either in the less
protected sectors, such as small industries and workshops, shops,
and small offices, or in the best protected state and public admin-
istration sector. Fourth, social assistance measures are widely dif-
ferentiated: there are as many poverty lines, vital minima, and so
on, as there are means-tested measures and providing groups.
Welfare state measures differ significantly across the country,
particularly along the line between the Center-North and South, and
also among provinces. Within an overall constant privileging of in-
come support, as opposed to social service provisions, not only is
there a great variance in the kind of income support distributed,
but also in the availability, quality, and cost of public social servic-
es (e.g., education, health, and care for children, the disabled, and
older persons). Since local governments do not have financial au-
tonomy, insofar as they cannot raise taxes, these differences are due,
on the one hand, to a differential territorial distribution of directly
state-provided resources (e.g., schools and hospitals) and pressure
by local governments to obtain, monitor, and even use them; on
the other hand, such differences are due to local governments' use
of the money distributed to them by the central state.
Ambivalences and Contradictions in
the State's Gender Structure
The categorical and clientelistic features of the Italian welfare
system, together with its heavy reliance on family unity and soli-
darity, have specific and sometimes ambivalent or contradictory
consequences for gender divisions and inequalities.
Italian women receive social benefits (e.g., health care and ser-
vices for their children) as mothers and wives, rather than as citi-
zens or workers. In this the democratic republic, with the excep-
tion of the extension of political rights to women, was not really
discontinuous with Fascism. The fascist regime, in fact, while push-
ing women out of the labor market and denying them control of
their bodies through punishment of contraception and abortion,
created the first widespread system of social and health services
(ONMI) catering to mothers and their children; ONMI even sup-
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68 • Saraceno
ported unwed mothers in their efforts to persuade their children's
fathers to accept their responsibilities (Saraceno 1991). At the same
time,
women's family relationships were the basis for legally restrict-
ing their access to the social rights attached to the full status of
(paid, male) worker (a feature carried into the sixties with the leg-
islation of the post-fascist republic): until the mid-fifties women were
legally barred from the best social security-protected and paid jobs
as well as from the higher employment ranks and could be fired if
they married or bore children.
Yet the very family-centered social definition of women, togeth-
er with the high value attributed in Italy to the family not only as
a social and moral institution, but also as the main redistributive
and caring social agency, resulted in social legislation which for a
long time privileged the model of a family with a male breadwin-
ner and a full-time housewife. Health insurance was progressively
extended to cover all family dependents, but only if the insured
worker was the husband-father. Survivors' pensions were extended
to many categories of workers, but only for survivors of husband-
fathers. Male workers were entitled to a family allowance for their
"dependents." Tax rebates might (and still may) be obtained for
dependent wives and children. As a consequence, wives and moth-
ers were discouraged from working—at least in the official, social
security-covered labor market—particularly if they could not ob-
tain a wage high enough to compensate for the loss of benefits for
the family.
If women worked, their contributions toward health insurance
and old age pensions carried less weight than those of men, since
women's benefits could not be extended to family dependents. Thus,
the Christian Democratic governments of the fifties did not change
from the fascist approach; they only widened the social groups (and
families), which were covered, and included rural workers and farm-
ers.
The most discriminatory provisions among these (the different
worth of men's and women's contributions) were removed only in
the mid-seventies, either because they were declared unconstitutional
(in the case of survivors' pensions paid only to surviving wives
6
)
or because of the institution of the National Health Service.
Since the 1950s, the focus on the family and its well-being result-
ed in a close and constant examination of the conditions of working
mothers by the Socialist, Communist, and Christian Democratic Par-
ties,
and the Catholic Church. While Catholics disapproved of moth-
ers working for pay and were in favor of a men's family wage, they
were concerned about the problems faced by women who "had to
work" due to economic hardships. They were, therefore, in favor of
long, paid maternity leaves, but they opposed the provision of pub-
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The Familism of the Italian Welfare State • 69
lie child care services campaigned for by the Left, trade unions, and
lay religious groups. Catholics resented what they perceived as an
"intrusion" of the state into family responsibilities and into an area—
services for children and families—that traditionally had been con-
trolled by the church and religious associations.
These somewhat contrasting views and interests inspired a num-
ber of legislative and social policy measures aimed at helping work-
ing mothers cope with their dual responsibilities: (1) one of the best
European laws on maternity leaves, (2) a system of public kinder-
gartens that now covers almost 80 percent of 3-5 year olds, and
(3) a system of public day care centers for children under age three,
which, although greatly underdeveloped, in some areas covers 30
percent of all children in that age bracket. The law granting ex-
tended paid, part compulsory, part optional maternity leaves to
working mothers was supported by the Catholic Party in 1971. The
Left and women's associations requested that child care services (day
care and kindergartens) be provided and financed by the state. Both
measures were eventually approved, partly due to the pressure of a
then highly visible women's movement. At present all working
mothers are entitled to two months of paid leave before and three
months after delivery, followed by an additional leave period with
reduced pay (this period may now be taken by the father or moth-
er).
At the same time children of working mothers receive priority
placement in day care and kindergartens.
The great majority of three-to-five-year-old children in Italy at-
tends kindergarten (mostly state organized), regardless of their
mothers' working status. In the urban areas of the Center-North,
the provision of day care for children under three is one of the ac-
knowledged responsibilities of the local government, although with
less emphasis than kindergartens: day care in the Center-North costs
more and there are fewer centers, compared to kindergartens. The
difference in availability and cost to families depends on a defini-
tion of the need: kindergartens have become increasingly defined
as a school service, connected to children's education; therefore, the
mother's working status is only an additional entitlement to the ser-
vice.
Day care services for children under three, on the contrary,
notwithstanding changes in legislation, are defined as personal so-
cial services, which (1) are not compulsory local responsibilities, (2)
must be partly paid for by users, although on a sliding scale based
on family income, and (3) are rationed on the basis of "need." Day
care services also are still primarily for children of working moth-
ers or of families defined as suffering from some kind of stress (e.g.,
divorced parents, unwed mothers, or parents receiving social assis-
tance).
A mother's full-time care-giving remains the ideal for this
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70 • Saraceno
age bracket.
7
A paradoxical consequence of this is that nonwork-
ing mothers do not receive any social support in raising their chil-
dren (under age three), since these mothers are defined as totally
adequate and self-sufficient.
The focus on women's family responsibilities, combined with a
categorical/clientelistic approach to social security, motivated the
granting of controversial privileges to specific categories of work-
ing mothers: if they are state employees, they receive credit toward
seniority for each child they bear. They also receive full pay (not
just the legislated 70 percent) during maternity leaves and may take
longer leave periods. Finally, until the fall 1992 reform, working
mothers constituted the main group that took advantage of the op-
portunity for state employees to retire after sixteen (instead of the
minimum twenty) years of work and begin receiving a pension,
without waiting to reach the general retirement age (these women
are called "baby pensioners"). To be sure, these pensions are rela-
tively low, because they are based on a reduced contributive peri-
od. These women, therefore, are liable to become poor in old age
if for some reason they lose access to an additional (husband-de-
rived) income. Yet this reduced pension is higher than the minimum
pension in the private sector and grants an income well before old
age.
Most women who chose this solution in the past did so with-
in a family strategy: their pension supplemented their husband's
income, and their availability for family work (caring for husbands,
children, and kin) was de facto financially supported by the state.
While the legislation for working mothers benefited mostly mid-
dle-class women, another measure was targeted at rural mothers
and derived from an analogous mixture of (1) a definition of women
as family members and secondary income providers, and (2) a cat-
egorical/clientelistic approach. Aimed at supporting the family in-
come of rural workers in the most economically undeveloped ar-
eas,
particularly in the South, this legislation grants unemployment
benefits, paid maternity leaves, and pension rights to rural employ-
ees who work a minimum number of days per year. Women in ru-
ral areas of the South (where men have difficulty earning a living
wage) use this legislation not so much in order to have a wage for
some months or to have the ridiculous unemployment indemnity,
but to have paid leaves during pregnancy and after birth, and to
assure themselves a minimum work pension. While there are em-
ployers who offer jobs as a "favor" toward this benefit, therefore
maintaining very low wages, there are also women (and men) who
pay to be registered as workers and then pay the contributions them-
selves without doing one day of work. While this phenomenon may
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The Familism of the Italian Welfare State • 71
be analyzed as part of the clientelistic system encouraged by gov-
ernmental policies, it has a special gender feature: social policy in
this case does not so much encourage the male breadwinner prin-
ciple as discourage women from finding an autonomous economic
base as workers. Women define themselves as workers only as part
of a family strategy aimed at gathering as many "income bits" as
possible (see also Balbo 1977). But their main, and often only, work
remains unpaid family work with little support from social servic-
es or husbands.
These policies on working mothers and rural workers, therefore,
provide family income support and continue the traditional gender
division of labor within the family by acknowledging some kind of
paid working status for wife-mothers even when they do not (or
no longer) work. While requiring citizens to have a high degree of
ingenuity and knowledge of the administration of social security and
social policies, the policies risk branding women who use them as
"cheating" the system, and as being overly dependent on public
funds.
The recent, legitimate, widespread outcry against the wom-
en "baby pensioners" among state employees, as well as against
"fake workers" receiving undeserved benefits, hides not only polit-
ical parties' and trade unions' responsibilities in creating this situ-
ation, but also their failure to develop generalized, more universal-
istic income support measures and minimum pension benefits. These
legitimate denunciations also failed to address the costs for wom-
en due to the lack of acknowledgment of women's family work.
Other measures, such as the means-tested family allowances
8
and
tax deductions for dependent spouses, as well as the recently in-
troduced family income threshold which determines access to free
health care,
9
discourage working women from insisting on receiv-
ing social security benefits, if their pay is not high enough to offset
the loss of other conjugal status-linked benefits as well as the in-
creased taxation on two-income households.
Women are entitled to workers' rights even if they have at best
only a partial work history; or women may hide their paid work
activity (therefore relinquishing their workers' rights). In both of
these cases, married women are defined and encouraged to perceive
themselves first and foremost as family members, insofar as the ad-
equacy of their income, as well as its visibility and benefits, depends
on the immediate family convenience, regardless of individual long-
term risks. Depending on the circumstances, however, women may
or may not be encouraged to appear as workers, regardless of ide-
ology and cultural values. Family interdependence, more than wom-
en's dependence is encouraged in Italy: given the gender division
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72 • Saraceno
of labor in the family and gender stratification and segregation in
the labor market, the emphasis on interdependence may result more
in women's economic dependency than in men's independence.
Another less gender specific social security measure was amply
used until the 1992 pension reform: workers who paid contribu-
tions for at least fifteen years were entitled to receive the minimum
work pension when they reached the pension age, without regard
to the value of the contributions. The difference between the amount
earned through contributions and the minimum pension was sup-
plemented by public funds. The only requirement was that the in-
dividual's personal income was no higher than twice the minimum
pension. On the average, these minimum pensions are 70 percent
supplemented by public funds—only about 30 percent of the pen-
sion is "earned" through contributions. Many self-employed arti-
sans and shopkeepers may take advantage of the minimum pension
because their contributions are very low compared to other work-
ers.
Many women who were formerly wage workers receive a sup-
plemented minimum pension because they worked up to the mini-
mum contributive years, or sometimes left work and paid voluntary
contributions until they reached the minimum requirements: they
left paid work in order to devote themselves to family work, but
counted on small pensions in old age to supplement their husbands'
incomes.
The fall 1992 reform, which grants the supplement only on the
basis of a means test applied to the couple's income (analogous to
what happened to the social assistance pension), has not only ren-
dered this strategy impossible for younger generations, it has also
disrupted the expectations of those now reaching the pension age
and who see their pension "cut" often by more than
half,
since they
will receive only what they contributed. They are now confronted
with the results of a strategy they were encouraged by social poli-
cies to undertake some years ago, and while others accuse them of
wanting more than they earned, they perceive themselves as cheat-
ed in their legitimate rights. This is an interesting, if painful, case
of social policies shaping and then disrupting life trajectories.
Women, particularly older women, are more likely to be exposed
to this risk, since criteria are now applied to them which were not
in the past. Further, the costs of women's dual burden and margin-
alization in the labor force are ignored. Younger women are strongly
encouraged to become economically independent if they want to
assure their economic well-being as individuals, even into old age.
At the same time the conditions under which young women make
their choices continue to encourage (if not force) them to consider
family interdependencies within a framework shaped by a persis-
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The Familism of the Italian Welfare State • 73
tent gender division of labor. Long-term individual and family eco-
nomic strategies and short-term family strategies may be increas-
ingly at odds.
Women's rights to incomes, social security, and support have been
best protected when they worked for a wage, rather than when they
were full-time care-givers. In fact, the highly extolled figure of the
full-time homemaker does not receive any substantial support
through social policy: her children, particularly those under three,
have little or no entitlement to places in a public child care service,
after-school activities, and so on; and her older parents have less
entitlement to at-home care (which is a means-tested measure any-
way).
If she divorces, the value of her unpaid family work is only
partially acknowledged.
The family law approved in 1975 stipulates that the economic
regime of marriage is "community property" (although exceptions
are possible on demand), regardless of the income of either spouse.
10
The law also explicitly points to the contribution of family work
to this property. But the only wealth taken into consideration is
"visible" property and savings, not the "command over resources"
gained through career and work experience and seniority. This
"command" remains her husband's property, although through fam-
ily work a woman has offered him the opportunity to invest in his
career (Oliver 1983; Pahl and Pahl 1971; Barbagli 1990; De Singly
1987).
Moreover, there is an increasing tendency by tribunals
(courts), in the name of gender equality, to withhold alimony from
wives if they are able-bodied, even if they have forfeited career op-
portunities in order to care for families or are too old to enter the
labor market (Barbagli 1990).
There is only one type of woman who is "privileged" in com-
parison to men or women in similar economic conditions: the solo
(widowed, separated, unwed) mother, with dependent children,
whose income is below the poverty level (Saraceno 1992a). In this
case motherhood entitles women to some form of specific (not work-
linked) rights or "legitimate" social dependency. Widows are enti-
tled to social pensions if their husbands died before achieving the
minimum pension. Separated or unwed mothers are entitled to some
kind of income support at the local level, to a higher degree and
for a longer time than adults with no dependent children or male-
headed families. But this "privileging" of motherhood occurs within
a framework that defines solo mothers who receive support as failed,
or interrupted, wives. There is, in addition, a hierarchy within this
group: widowed mothers receive more secure entitlements than sep-
arated, divorced, or unwed mothers.
Women as wives and mothers are expected to act as a resource
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74 • Saraceno
of the welfare state (and of course also of the labor market, through
their reproductive work): school schedules, the scarce availability
of school cafeterias, the scarce availability of at-home help for older
and disabled persons, and the structure of care in hospitals and old
age homes require homemakers to fill the gaps and connect the ser-
vices (see also Balbo 1984). There are, however, important region-
al differences. It is significant that in regions (such as the Center-
North, where there is a high labor force participation rate by
women) with increased numbers of working mothers, and where
the women's movement in the seventies and eighties succeeded in
lobbying for women's interests at the local government level, the
number of social services for children and older persons is high. It
is low (and mostly in the form of institutionalization rather than
at-home and community care services) where women's employment
rate is low, although both their employment and unemployment
rates are rising (Saraceno 1992b).
In other words, within a persistent cultural and social policy
framework, which points to the family as the locus and women as
the main providers of care, changes in women's choices and actions
somewhat shifted the balance toward the state and social services
in the most developed areas of the country (while leaving substan-
tially untouched men's responsibilities and actions). Moreover, the
spread of social services in these areas helped to develop, and was
accompanied by, a culture of individual rights, particularly of so-
cial rights defined as individual rather than family rights (see also
Bimbi 1992): child care services have been partly redefined as ca-
tering to children's rights and needs; "family clinics" cater first to
individuals' (mostly women's) demands for control of their health,
body, and reproductive rights. These are also the areas of the coun-
try where the birthrate is one of the lowest in the world, and in
some regions (Emilia Romagna, Piemonte, Liguria) the divorce rate
approaches that of the Nordic countries. All of this points to rene-
gotiations and redefinitions of the marriage contract, including the
gender division of labor and power (Barbagli 1990).
Current Trends and their Impact on Between-gender and
Within-gender Inequalities
In recent years, a public debt apparently out of control, budget
reforms required by the Maastricht deadline, and heavy criticism
increasingly leveled at the delivery of public services have prompt-
ed a "hidden" reform of the Italian welfare state. This reform be-
came more explicit with the measures approved in fall 1992: (1) a
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The Familism of the Italian Welfare State • 75
further shift of responsibilities from state to local governments in
the areas of social assistance and services, (2) a re-privatization/re-
familization of responsibilities for the cost of some services or goods
(starting from needs, services, and goods in health care), and (3)
an increasing institutionalization of "social partnership" between
state or local governments and nonprofit or volunteer associations.
At the same time, work-related social security benefits have been
"purified" of "improper" meanings and aims (cutting all improp-
erly defined work pensions), without instituting alternative non-
work-related income support measures. As a consequence, an in-
creasing number of welfare state provisions has moved from the area
of either social security or citizenship rights to that of means-test-
ed social assistance and has been labeled as public dependency.
Changes in the National Health Service are particularly impor-
tant for understanding not only how family interdependence is used
and constructed (by Italian policymakers to cut costs and ration
individual rights), but also the deviousness and ambiguity of the
state's redistributive mechanisms. Accelerating a process initiated
in the eighties, the universalistic features of the National Health
Service have been greatly restricted. Health services remain free for
all citizens only in the cases of hospital care and prescriptions for
specified chronic or life threatening illnesses. In all other cases, cit-
izens are exempted from paying only if they are poor older persons,
(i.e.,
receiving only a social or minimum pension), permanently dis-
abled with an invalidity pension, or "certified poor," receiving in-
come support from local authorities.
11
People who are not exempt-
ed from charges are divided into two categories on the basis of
household income and family size. Those below the threshold pay,
for example, a percentage on prescriptions, laboratory exams, and
specialists' visits. Those above the threshold pay the full cost of
those services, up to a certain amount.
12
These measures might be interpreted as a further redistribution
from those with higher incomes, who have already paid higher con-
tributions and taxes, to those with lower incomes. Difficulties in
accepting this interpretation derive from the ambiguous mixture
through which the system is financed. Insofar as wage workers' con-
tributions are the major part of the financing system, they expect
to be entitled to services without further costs. Moreover, since taxes
are derived more from wages than from any other income in Italy,
workers above the income threshold feel cheated by a system that
not only protects the poor, but rewards tax evaders.
13
Further, al-
though family size is considered in the income threshold (an im-
provement with regard to the first formulation of the norm), the
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76 • Saraceno
formula is too simplistic: the age of family members is not consid-
ered, particularly the age of children, a crucial element in determin-
ing needs and expenses for health care.
The risk is that, given the higher costs, households just above
the income threshold will delay seeking specialist care as long as
possible, and the benefits of preventative health care will be lost,
with consequences for individuals and the community. This may
influence as well the use of services that relate to the individual's
freedom and privacy: if young girls, on the basis of their parents'
income, will be asked to pay for a gynecologist's exam at the fami-
ly clinic (which earlier had been free) and for birth control pills or
other contraceptives and laboratory exams, it is predictable that
many of them will renounce all such services and advice.
1
*
Finally, given the abrupt rise in costs, a family just above the in-
come threshold may decide it is more convenient for the wage earner
with the lower income (usually the wife) to drop out of the official
labor force. The consequences are clear not only for tax evasion,
but for the social security and labor history of that earner. The new,
long-term social security requirements and the short-term family-
based requirements are in conflict here, particularly for "second-
ary" wage earners—married women. More generally, health care
has returned to the status of a family-linked right, after about fifteen
years as an individual right.
These trends are not univocal in meaning and consequences, how-
ever, although they all point to a retrenchment of direct state re-
sponsibilities in providing rights. Shifting the responsibilities of sup-
porting the cost of services, such as health care and personal social
services, back to families widens social inequalities and may have
contradictory effects on the gender division of labor: it may encour-
age women who can command only low wages to abandon their
jobs (or to enter the "black" labor market
15
) in order to keep the
family income low enough to be exempted from the various kinds
of charges and/or to exchange too costly social services with "free"
family work. It may also encourage other families to remain or be-
come dual-income families in order to bear the costs of those same
services.
There is a further, and possibly increasing, differentiation of rights
and provisions granted at the local level depending, on the one hand,
on politically defined priorities (child care or services for older per-
sons;
at-home care or institutionalization) and clienteles, and, on
the other hand, the availability of "social partners" (volunteer and
nonprofit agencies). For example, it is already clear that while there
are geographical areas where a synergy exists between public and
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The Familism of the Italian Welfare State • 77
nonprofit and volunteer services, in other areas many needs are left
to family resources or unsupported small volunteer associations (Sa-
raceno 1992b). This situation affects citizens regardless of gender,
but it also has a gender specificity insofar as the lack of a system
of public and/or nonprofit services has consequences for family in-
comes and women's care-giving work. Moreover, the limitations on
social expenses due to budget constraints will probably be hardest
on the weakest "clienteles": poor older persons (mostly women),
solo mothers, and so on.
The institutionalization of social partnership—cooperation be-
tween local government and nonprofit and volunteer associations—
certainly grants neither a reduction of public expenses nor a con-
trol on clientelism. Yet it constitutes a public admission that the
family is no longer the only adequate alternative to state-provided
services. Women's family work is no longer the only resource to be
called on when social provisions are scarce or inadequate. The in-
creasing labor force participation rate among younger women (Ge-
sano 1990; Pristinger 1992), together with the aging of the popu-
lation (with an accompanying increase in demands for care), are
probably as relevant for this change as the more ideological shift
which values civil society and private (profit and nonprofit) initia-
tives against the "statist" model of the welfare state.
The various regional laws encouraging the maintenance of dis-
abled persons within their homes, through income support for the
caring costs (whoever provides the caring work), have ambivalent
meanings and point in different directions.
16
On the one hand, the
laws acknowledge not only the individual's right to be cared for
without being institutionalized, but also the economic value of the
caring performed. On the other hand, while the standards of care
are not always granted, the short- and long-term impact on the care-
givers (mostly women), as well as on their families, has not been
sufficiently considered, particularly since it will be the poorest group
who will use such income support, offering in exchange a wom-
an's caring work, instead of using the income provided to partly
pay for a non-family care-giver.
From these observations, we see a high differentiation in both
families' and womens' options and conditions depending on their
locality, in terms of the local context and culture of social policy
and citizenship rights, and on the resources they have with regard
to the labor market—that is, depending on their location within the
two dimensions which now more than ever frame citizenship in It-
aly: local (regional) residence and participation in the labor mar-
ket. Both are equally important in defining the degree of women's
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78
•
Saraceno
autonomy from family responsibilities and ties, insofar as they de-
termine the degree to which a portion of the reproductive work will
be cared for by social services instead of being defined as women's
unpaid work.
In turn, such specific circumstances might also encourage with-
in-family, between-sexes renegotiations of the gender structure of
family responsibilities and power, and the structuring and acknowl-
edgment of dependencies and interdependencies, although there is
not a linear relationship between these phenomena. In any case,
women living in less favorable circumstances are likely to experi-
ence an even greater reduction of their individual social rights and
remain entangled in a double-edged family solidarity that makes
them dependent on their husbands' incomes.
NOTES
1.
Provisions concerning youth unemployment allow that
18-29 (and
in some cases
up to 35)
year-old youths
be
hired under temporary—train-
ing—contracts
at a
minimum wage, under
the
assumption that they
do not
have family responsibilities.
No
matter that
the
average
age at
marriage
for
men in
Italy
is 27 and for
women
is
23:
the
"young"
are by
definition
still children living
in
their parents' household
and
partly still dependent
on them.
2.
During
the
1950s, social insurance coverage
in
Italy
was the
lowest
in western Europe
due to the
reduced pension
and
unemployment cover-
age (Ferrera 1985; Ferrera 1993; Flora
and
Alber 1981; Ascoli 1986).
3.
Ferrera wrote: "Nowhere else
(not
even
in
countries characterized
by
a
high institutional fragmentation
of
provisions
and
policies)
can one
detect such
an
intense diffusion
of
particularistic patterns
of
providing
benefits....
The
party-clientelistic manipulation
of
social security provi-
sions
is an
almost unique phenomenon
of our
country" (1985, 271-72).
Explanations
of
this usually refer
to the
presence
of a
strong class conflict
and
of
strongly conflicting ideological identities
and
memberships (e.g.,
Catholic
and
Communist)
and to the
impossibility
of
really changing gov-
ernment coalitions during
the
Cold War. Party government
and
clientelism
were ways
of
dealing with
and
controlling conflict,
and
consequences
of
the lack
of
change among those
in
power.
4.
In
Italy there
are two
kinds
of
publicly-subsidized preschool servic-
es:
creches,
or day
care
(asili
nido),
are for
children three months
to
three
years
old;
kindergartens (scuola materna,
or
scuola
per
I'infanzia)
are for
children three
to
five years old. Creches
are
open about eight hours
a day,
five days
a
week, eleven months
a
year; kindergartens
are
open
six to
eight
hours
a day,
five days
a
week,
ten
months
a
year.
The
creches
are
more
expensive
for
parents (who
pay a fee
based
on
family income), less wide-
spread,
and a
municipal responsibility; kindergartens
are
almost free
for
parents
(who pay
only
a
nominal
fee
plus
the
price
of the
school meal),
more widespread,
and
mostly
a
state responsibility. Both offer care
and
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The Familism of the Italian Welfare State • 79
education, although historically creches have been defined more as a car-
ing and social assistance service, while kindergartens have been defined
more in educational terms.
5.
In principle, this system should have been financed through general
taxation. This part of the reform, however, was never implemented and
the system maintained a dual financing system: through workers' and em-
ployers' contributions, as in the old systems, and through taxation for the
self-employed. Given the inefficiency of the Italian fiscal system, the bur-
den of financing the National Health Service for all citizens remained heavi-
er for wage workers and for citizens living not only in the richer regions
of the country, but in the regions where the quota of (official) wage work
was higher. This phenomenon, combined with bureaucratic inefficiency and
political clientelism, eventually led to the present financial crisis of the
National Health Service: each year the state has to cover each region's
budget deficit in health care and, at the same time, regions are not always
able to hire the needed personnel or finance needed purchases of medical
equipment and restructuring of hospitals. These problems lie behind the
reform of the system inaugurated in fall 1992.
6. A surviving husband may now receive a survivor's pension. Survi-
vors'
pensions are paid even to people (men and women) who have a pen-
sion or income already. Surviving children no longer receive it when they
reach the legal age of eighteen.
7.
In recent years women's and parents' groups, as well as day care
workers' groups, have been campaigning for the acknowledgment of day
care as an educational rather than only as a caring service. These groups
insist that it is a working mother's and a child's right, because of the chang-
es in family composition and the increasing awareness of the importance
of early intellectual stimulation and education.
8. In Italy there is no universal child benefit, as there is in England or
France. Fascism introduced family allowances for wage workers: family
allowances were paid to wage workers who were family heads, usually
husbands, for their dependents (mothers received allowances if they were
wage workers without husbands). This system continued until the mid-
eighties, when the amount was raised and means testing introduced. Now
these allowances are paid to families of wage workers and pensioners be-
low family income thresholds. These thresholds are indexed and differ ac-
cording to family size and are higher if it is a one-parent family or if there
is a disabled family member. In Italy, "family income" exists only for
means-testing purposes, not for taxation. Income taxes, in fact, are based
on individually earned income, and citizens are taxed separately on their
income. Economically dependent spouses, children, and parents entitle the
taxpayer to a tax deduction.
9. Italian citizens have been divided into three categories based on fami-
ly income: (1) the "poor" (particularly older persons and the disabled poor),
who receive health services and prescription drugs free of charge, (2) the
"low income," who must pay a percentage for each prescription and lab
exam, and (3) the "rich," who must pay the full cost of prescriptions and
lab exams. The income threshold is defined in relation to family size.
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80 • Saraceno
10.
It is interesting, at any rate, that among younger couples an increas-
ing number chose not to have community property. This is true for over
50 percent of new marriages in the larger towns of the Center-North. It
increases among women who are more educated and is directly linked with
their having paid jobs (Barbagli 1993). Apparently more women are choos-
ing not to consider the family as an economic unit, even if this might weak-
en their economic rights if and when their marriage breaks up.
11.
In order to avoid abuse (and instead of controlling general practitio-
ners),
these "exempted" persons are given stamps which are withdrawn one
by one with each prescription. When they exhaust their stamps, they may re-
ceive some other assistance based on the general practitioner's advice.
12.
In order to use the general practitioner they must also pay an an-
nual charge of L.85.000 for each household member. This last charge is
compulsory, whether one uses the National Health Service general practi-
tioner or not.
13.
The question is complicated further by the fact that the income
considered refers to 1992 but, due to the economic crisis, many (both blue-
and white-collar) families' incomes have been reduced because of cuts in
overtime pay and regular working hours, or, worse still, job loss. More
generally, many families are not at all secure that their income will be as-
sured even through one year—they may lose their jobs.
14.
Further changes are envisaged in the Financial Law to be approved
at the end of 1994. These changes take account more of age than of house-
hold size and income. Children under age twelve and people over age six-
ty-five should receive services free of charge. It is not possible to be more
precise about this because the law is at present being debated and there
are new proposals almost daily.
15.
The black (or informal) labor market is, of course, not covered by
social security. Both wages and employers' profits evade taxation. These
may include jobs as servants, housecleaners, or childminders, or work in
small workshops and offices. Many women, as well as young people, work
in this market. Many men with social-security covered jobs also hold a
job in this informal market.
16.
The amount paid may vary, although it usually ranges between the
social and minimum pensions. At the national level, laws stipulate that
disabled individuals who are not self-sufficient may be entitled to an "ac-
companying person" indemnity and that an individual who forfeited work-
ing in order to care for a disabled person will receive a social pension when
old. Employed people may take temporary unpaid leaves, with seniority
guaranteed, in order to care for a disabled person.
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