Child Well Being and Parents' Work: the Evaluations of Firm's Compliance to Work-life balance

This paper presents a first attempt to evaluate the level of quality of life, work and children well-being by an analysis of what happens in Italian firms. The Italian labour market shows a high degree of gender inequalities notwithstanding the advanced labour market regulation in terms of Equal Opportunities. Italian women still experience many inequalities at their workplaces such as: wage differences, lower career paths, higher percentages of fixed-term and short-term contracts, etc. This can negatively affect mothers’ employment probability and affect the income composition of families with children. Women’s employment rate on average in Italy was 46.6% in year 2007 (Istat, Labour Force Survey data) far below the 60% Lisbon target and far below men’s employment rate (70.7%). In this paper we address, in connection to child well being, the issue of what happens inside the firm with regards to equity in the firm as women tend to be underrepresented in Italy in apical position since this fact has negative effect on family and child wellbeing and work-life balance policies since these policies can have a positive effect on parents’ employment probability and can lead to a better interaction with children. This attempt is possible by analysing the results of a research devoted to a “level of certification” of private Italian firms on gender equity that includes also the work-life dimension. For this evaluation we use a Fuzzy Expert System (FES). The scope for using FES is connected not only to the multidimensional nature of certification and to the need of providing its synthetic indicator without losing its complexity, but also to allow the interdisciplinarities in the the composite group of experts involved in the project. The presence of sociologists, economists, trade unions members, not used to a mathematics language, carried us to propose an instrument more user friendly like a FES.