Promotion of gender equality at the workplace: gender mainstreaming and collective bargaining in Italy

The article examines gender equality in collective bargaining and looks at the extent to which gender and equal opportunities issues have been mainstreamed in industrial relations systems in Italy where, despite the existence of old and new legislation on gender equality, there are persistently low levels of female employment and the precarious workforce is made up predominantly of women. The central question addressed in the article is whether the injection of a gender mainstreaming approach in the Italian collective bargaining system, combined with legislative measures, may improve the situation of women in the context of both public and private spheres. In particular, the article looks at whether gender mainstreaming has the potential to pave the way towards an ethos of substantive equality at the workplace, whereby women enter the workforce on equal terms and men are in a position to share the dual responsibilities of paid and unpaid work. The article maintains that gender mainstreaming may fulfil its transformative potential as a catalyst for changing both the conceptual and analytical tools which the law deploys, provided it is envisaged as a three-fold strategy involving simultaneous processes of deconstruction, replacement and inclusive measures, together with deliberative forms of democracy and the imposition of a statutory positive duty on public authorities to mainstream equality. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.