The self–employment programs and gender inequalities: the ambiguities of activation in Italy

The activation policies in Italy have followed a “substitutionwelfare” path. In the second part of the 90s Italian reformswere aimed to rise the employment rates, especiallyfor women. By doing so the activation labor policies havebeen reckoned as the main way to help new outsidersand weak workers to get a job. As a result, the Italianway to flexicurity has been developed as a dual systembased on strong employees from one side, and weakworkers from the other side. Basically only the latter wereasked to risk. This assumption of self-reliance justifies thechoice of the evaluation of the self-employment andentrepreneurship programs (Measure7) as the most riskstakingpolicy. It is assumed that the Italian context cannot adoptthe same policies of other countries wishing to have thesame impacts and that similar programs foster totally differentimpacts: in favor or against the goal of gender equality. Thisnew implicit contract between citizens and welfare state looksto be ambiguous and based on the commodification of laborforce. Primary data concerning attitudes are discussed in orderto understand if and how women are pushed to becomeself-employed.