Mothers and Workers in the Time of COVID-19: Negotiating Motherhood within Smart Working

The article is an autoethnographic account written by three Italian academic researchers and mothers with children of different ages. The authors engage in a reflection starting with their experience as working women committed to the work–family negotiation process while facing the COVID-19 health emergency that has affected the whole world. This article focuses on how we, as middle-class, heterosexual, white mothers working in a privileged employment context during the period of the pandemic lockdown, negotiated the complex mother and worker roles, balancing work and family time while smart working (teleworking from home). We start with a reflection on the use of autoethnography as a research tool and then propose an analysis of work–family balance strategies in an anomalous situation, such as that of the lockdown, highlighting the tensions in gender roles within dual-career families

Women Face to Fear and Safety Devices During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy: Impact of Physical Distancing on Individual Responsibility, Intimate, and Social Relationship

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 in Italy had its first epidemic manifestations on January 31, 2020. The socio-sanitary rules imposed by the government concerned the social distance and management of intimate relationships, the sense of individual responsibility toward public health. Physical distancing and housing isolation have produced new representations of intrafamily, generational, neighborhood, community responsibility, bringing out a new “medicalized dimension” of society. In light of this contextual framework, the research aims are to analyze how: the perception of individual responsibility for public and familial health and physical distancing has redrawn the relation between subjects-family-community; the State’s technical-health intervention has reformulated the idea of social closeness, but also how the pandemic fear and social confinement has re-evaluated a desire for community, neighborhood, proximity; during the lockdown families, friends, neighbors have reconstructed feelings of closeness and forms of belonging. The methodology used is quanti-qualitative and involved 300 women through an online questionnaire. The data collected highlight how the house during the lockdown is perceived as a safe place and how women implement both the recommendations and the behaviors aimed at preventing contagion, but also ways that allow coping with the situation from a perspective of well-being. Furthermore, the data show how the dimension of distancing has loosened the relational dimension outside the family unit, with a greater distancing compared to pre-pandemic data. However, the majority of women report that they have joined solidarity initiatives, demonstrating that they want to maintain ties and participate actively in community life

Care Tasks and New Routines for Italian Families during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Perspectives from Women

The lockdown management during the COVID-19 pandemic has been very complex for families. The present study is part of a broader interdisciplinary research and follows the gender perspective, which has made it possible to bring a focus on the pandemic starting with women who, within family dynamics, have suffered most from the effects of the lockdown, having to manage multiple roles simultaneously and in the same place. The data were collected through an on-line survey. The aim is to understand how family routines were structured during the lockdown and how women’s emotional regulation developed during this period. Moreover, a further area of investigation focused on the distribution of domestic work and childcare among partners and on the relationships between smart working and the family dimension. The participants are 300 women living in different Italian region. The data highlights how during lockdown women with children have more regulatory and relational routines than women without children and that during this period both regulatory and relational routines become less consistent. It also emerges that women perceive that they dedicate more time to domestic activities and childcare than their partners do anthe effects of the lockdown, having to manage multiple roles simultaneously and in the same place. The data were collected through an on-line survey. The aim is to understand how family routines were structured during the lockdown and how women’s emotional regulation developed during this period. Moreover, a further area of investigation focused on the distribution of domestic work and childcare among partners and on the relationships between smart working and the family dimension. The participants are 300 women living in different Italian region. The data highlights how during lockdown women with children have more regulatory and relational routines than women without children and that during this period both regulatory and relational routines become less consistent. It also emerges that women perceive that they dedicate more time to domestic activities and childcare than their partners do and that the time dedicated to childcare is greater in the 0-6 year range. Moreover, it emerges clearly how reconciling the smart working with the family dimension is not always easy

Family well-being during the COVID-19 lockdown in Italy: Gender differences and solidarity networks of care

During the COVID-19 pandemic, families experienced new challenges related to reorganizing living spaces and the need to renegotiate domestic and care roles. This paper aims to understand how Italian families have reacted to this situation with respect to psychological well-being, the management of domestic and care activities and solidarity networks of care. The participants were 560 Italian subjects who reported having a parental role. The protocol included a measure of well-being (the General Health Questionnaire-12) and some questions related to the time dedicated to domestic activities or to caring for people, the perception of conflict within the family and solidarity networks of care. The data underline how mothers continued to devote more time to home and care activities than fathers, despite the presence of both partners at home during the lockdown. The results also indicate that mothers participated to a greater extent than fathers in solidarity activities, confirming that this dimension is linked to gender. Furthermore, fathers and mothers perceived a lower condition of well-being in relation to the pre-pandemic period

Discursos y acciones en torno a la sexualidad en adolescentes ecuatorianas en Génova

[spa] En este artículo queremos focalizar los discursos en torno a la sexualidad de las jóvenes latinoamericanas migrantes. La investigación que aquí presentamos es parte de un proyecto más amplio llevado a cabo en Génova (Italia) con chicos y chicas latinoamericanas que acuden a los servicios públicos educativos y médicos. En nuestro artículo queremos analizar en especifico el caso de las chicas, que como subraya McRobbie (2000) muchas veces están invisibilizadas en los estudios culturales sobre jóvenes. En los últimos años en la opinión pública, sobre todo en el discurso de los médicos y de los trabajadores sociales, se ha difundido una imagen estereotipada de las jóvenes latinoamericanas que se enfoca mucho sobre el tema de la sexualidad, sobre todo cuando se habla de embarazos precoces, de abortos y de libertinaje. Esta imagen contribuye a crear una forma de pánico moral construido acerca de los comportamientos sexuales de estos jóvenes en contraposición con los de los chicos italianos. En nuestro ensayo queremos subrayar como las chicas entrevistadas en los grupos focales están construyendo su identidad y su imagen como jóvenes, mujeres y migrantes de una forma alternativa que sobrepasa los estereotipos culturalistas y etnicista y que testimonian su camino personal, sus creencias y sus acciones, no solo acerca de la sexualidad sino en torno a su vida. [eng] The present paper aims to focus upon young Latino-American immigrants' discourses over sexuality. Presented data and reflections emerge from a more extensive research project on young immigrant men and women accessing public social and educational services in Genoa (Italy). More in detail, recalling McRobbie's suggestion (2000), and young immigrant women experiences are put into focus as the topic often appears to be unchallenged in cultural studies over (immigrant) youths. In recent years, following extensive reports from health and social practitioners, a stereotyped prejudice has grown in local Genoese public opinion over sexual behaviours among young "Latinas" with particular reference to pregnancies/abortion practices and sexual intercourse habits. These images have boost off as sense of "moral" panic in terms of an alleged young Latino-American females' dissolute behaviour in comparison to their Italian counterparts. On the contrary field data, collected among many of these young women, reveal a totally different image: they are largely aware of their social condition and strive to build an alternative positive social image and identity, far beyond ethnocentric and culturally imposed stereotypes. Ultimately, deepening the question from an inside perspective, these young women provide a strong personal commitment in sticking to personal and socio-cultural values and affirming themselves as positive and stable subjects not only in sexual behaviour terms but as a whole

Masonry Italian code-conforming buildings. Part 1: case studies and design methods

Several architectural configurations of unreinforced masonry residential buildings are designed according to the different methods proposed in the Italian code: rules for the so-called simple masonry buildings, linear and nonlinear static analyses. Always complying with code requirements, for each building-site combination, the design was made, as much as possible, without an excessive margin of safety. The different design methods provided buildings with very different levels of safety, being linear static analysis largely overconservative with respect to the nonlinear static approach. These buildings were then analyzed in the companion pape

Combined use of x-ray fluorescence microscopy, phase contrast imaging for high resolution quantitative iron mapping in inflamed cells

X-ray fluorescence microscopy (XRFM) is a powerful technique to detect and localize elements in cells. To derive information useful for biology and medicine, it is essential not only to localize, but also to map quantitatively the element concentration. Here we applied quantitative XRFM to iron in phagocytic cells. Iron, a primary component of living cells, can become toxic when present in excess. In human fluids, free iron is maintained at 10-18 M concentration thanks to iron binding proteins as lactoferrin (Lf). The iron homeostasis, involving the physiological ratio of iron between tissues/secretions and blood, is strictly regulated by ferroportin, the sole protein able to export iron from cells to blood. Inflammatory processes induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or bacterial pathoge inhibit ferroportin synthesis in epithelial and phagocytic cells thus hindering iron export, increasing intracellular iron and bacterial multiplication. In this respect, Lf is emerging as an important regulator of both iron and inflammatory homeostasis. Here we studied phagocytic cells inflamed by bacterial LPS and untreated or treated with milk derived bovine Lf. Quantitative mapping of iron concentration and mass fraction at high spatial resolution is obtained combining X-ray fluorescence microscopy, atomic force microscopy and synchrotron phase contrast imaging

Family and migration: a complex relationship. The case of migrant Ecuadorian families

Los estudios sobre la población migrante ecuatoriana en Italia están siendo cada vez más numerosos e importantes. El trabajo desde la perspectiva cualitativa aporta los elementos que desde la subjetividad se tienen que tener presentes. Las relaciones entre familia y emigración, complejas en esencia, se abordan en este texto que introduce al lector en los elementos básicos de análisis

Familias en movimiento: más allá de los estereotipos de la maternidad transnacional

This article analyses the transnational motherhoods’ subject, based on some researches carried out in Italy and Ecuador with migrants and their relatives. Taking into consideration the families’ strategies and relationships established in spite of the distance, with this work I propose a critical view of the thesis that the migration is itself a catastrophic event for the families. This thesis is mainly adopted in case of female migration flow, as in the examples presented in this work.Este artículo versa sobre el tema de la maternidad transnacional a partir de algunas investigaciones llevadas a cabo en Italia y en Ecuador con migrantes y sus familiares residentes en países de origen y destino. Tomando en cuenta la complejidad de las relaciones y las estrategias que estas familias desarrollan en la distancia, se propone aquí un análisis crítico que contrasta con la idea de que la migración es un hecho de por sí catastrófico para las familias. Dicha visión está mayormente difundida con respecto a los flujos migratorios femeninos, como en los casos aquí analizados