El trabajo a tiempo parcial como medida de conciliación de la vida laboral y familiar y sus consecuencias en las futuras pensionesuna visión comparada entre España e Italia

Abstract

This research focuses on the analysis of the factors that influenced the evolution of the part-time employment contract, in a comparative view between Spain and Italy. In these two realities, both belonging to the Mediterranean area, part-time work has had a similar development: in both, in fact, part-time work has experienced a low participation as an employment formula, whose use has been constantly increasing over time but with a particular incidence in the female group. The basic question was to analyze whether this contract continued to represent a type of work that would allow family reconciliation or whether it now represents – almost solely – a tool for making the workforce more flexible that allows companies to adjust their organization based on production needs, a factor that has been especially evident since the 2007 crisis. The use of part-time in a social context in which the elderly population is growing, at least on the European continent, together with the low fertility that both countries share, are factors that have also highlighted the negative effect on future pensions of the female collective. This situation poses a serious problem of poverty of the older generations, which are becoming more numerous, which governments must face. Above all, this again involves the female group, who are busier than men in this type of employment and who, mainly due to motherhood, have had more interruptions in their professional career and less progress. The analysis therefore also led to investigate the dimension of family reconciliation, an area in which the two countries have instead adopted different solutions from the point of view of gender equality, and the effects on the future pensions. The work sought to combine the legal perspective with the sociological one to try to understand its evolution and what factors have determined its current characteristics as well as the questions still open and how this type of contract can be improved. The analysis of part-time work, in fact, cannot ignore the gender perspective, as well as the relationship with other forms of work that are emerging, such as agile work, as well as with the changes in organizations brought about by the recent health crisis.