Women and jobs

Inequalities of Yesterday and Today, curated by theIstituto degli Innocenti and Fiom CGIL. The exhibition, which opened today in the Salone Borghini of theIstituto degli Innocenti, will be open until March 29, 2018.

The exhibition is meant to be a way to talk about women workers, stories and rights, from multiple points of view. Images, many of them collected from the archives of major Florentine factories, documents and statistical surveys tell the visitor about the social and legislative changes that transformed people's mindsets and families' habits, from women's entry into the factories to the difficult path of reconciling domestic and childcare work, from mobilizing for improved working and living conditions to the recognition of the baliatico as a welfare and cultural service.

"We chose this place because theIstituto degli Innocenti is one of Italy's oldest institutions dedicated to child care," stresses Daniele Calosi, secretary general of Fiom CGIL in Florence, "and child care is the first step on the path to reconciling work time and family care time. But women's emancipation will be achieved only when women no longer have to choose between family and career, and we are still far from this result."

"To retrace the history of women's work is to immerse oneself in the social changes that have involved women, families and children," comments Maria Grazia Giuffrida, President of theIstituto degli Innocenti . "From one of the oldest occupations intended for women, the bailiwick, to the occupations that especially in the 20th century allowed women to achieve greater independence, it is interesting to focus on the laborious assertion of rights in defense of women's health and work.