On International Women's Day, Italian working mother reflexes on life for women in Italy

As several events were held in Italy on Tuesday to celebrate the International Women's Day, gender inequality is still a main theme in the daily life in the country, especially in the workforce, making one woman look abroad for better opportunities.

"Reconciling work and family life is still very hard in Italy," Melinda Brindicci, a 38-year-old mother of two, told Xinhua.

"I keep detecting a huge gap in the quality life of female workers with children when I compare their average situation here in Italy with that of many of my friends living for example in France, the UK, or the Netherlands."

Brindicci added those girlfriends abroad could generally afford a better life thanks to family state benefits, or the possibility to work at home when children are ill, and to an overall wider flexibility in the work environment.

She said the situation as it stood in Italy made her consider to move abroad to improve her own situation as worker and mother.

Brindicci graduated from L'Orientale University in Naples, Europe's oldest school of sinology, and has been working at the China National Tourism Office in Rome for almost three years.

Her experience in China was also quite extensive. "I spent eight years in China overall, studying and working," she explained.

"I would be glad to spend a further period of my life there, if I found a good opportunity for my career and life."

Indeed, Italy still lags behind all its major partners in the European Union (EU) in terms of gender equality, according to the latest European gender equality index.

"(Italy's) performance is above the EU average in one area only, namely health, thanks to Italian women's long life expectancy. In any other respect, the situation is far from being satisfactory," the index's authors wrote in 2015.

Reconciling work and family life proved particularly hard for Italian women because of "lack of services for children, and above all for the elderly, combined with rigid work arrangements."

Plus, women "are over-represented in atypical and precarious jobs," the EU gender equality index pointed out.

As such, it was no surprise that employment rates in Italy reached 47 percent among Italian women against 66 percent among Italian men, the latest data from the national institute of statistics (ISTAT) showed.

Furthermore, Italy's fertility rate is one of the lowest in the world: that is, an average of 9.3 children per 1,000 inhabitants, or 1.37 births per woman, according to statistics.

Italy also has the lowest fertility rate in women aged less than 30 in the EU, together with Spain, Greece, and Portugal, the EU statistical office (EUROSTAT) said.

However, Italy showed some recent improvements.

Women run some 29 percent of the senior management positions available in the country, a three-percent increase compared to 2015, according to Grant Thornton's 2016 international business report.

The EU's average is at 24.2 percent, and Italy ranks 10th in the world after China in this perspective.

Plus, Italy's gender pay gap is one of the lowest in the EU, thanks to "a prevalence of highly educated women in the female labor force, and a strong system of collective bargaining," the index found.

However, according to Brindicci, the Italian state still fails to provide adequate family benefits for working parents, and services for children, such as public schools, don't often work in accordance with parents' schedules and needs, she said.

Plus, when Brindicci was job searching for a position that matched her skills, Italian companies often made her feel as if being a mother of two children was a "handicap," she said.

"Where I work now, they showed trust in me and allowed me to prove I can fulfil my tasks regardless of my parental duties," Brindicci said.

"During my previous job search, do you know how many times I was told during interviews: 'Ah... but you have children,' or, 'We were looking for a man.'?...As a woman, this is the worst thing you can hear," she said. Endit