Smart work and home-work in historical perspective: a gender analysis.

The crisis induced by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has forced so many to work from home. Smart work is a solution that has made it possible not to lose a job at a time when it was essential. On the other hand, the reversion to working within the domestic walls has re-evoked that phenomenon that burst out in the post-World War II era known as home-based work. Through primarily institutional and statistical sources, the present paper aims to display how the return to work at home is particularly dangerous for women. In the 1950s they were the ones working at home, in 2020 they are still the ones staying home to work, due to a series of coincidences and constraints. The intent of this paper is to compare the assumptions and conditions underlying these two historically relevant events. The analysis starts with the most recent of the cases, to then go back in time. Major prominence is given to the home-based work of the 1950s-60s, which can be argued to be the ancestor of the modern form of smart work. The key tenet of this study is that gender roles are still as well entrenched in Italy today as they were in the 1950s, as evidenced by, inter alia, data on wages. The final part of this work focuses on this very theme, taken as a symbol of the injustice and inequality that afflicts women in the world of work, the influences of which spill over into the family sphere.