Child well being and parents' work: the evaluation 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 wellbeing by an analysis of what happens in Italian firms. The Italian labour market shows remarkable 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. 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%). This fact produces difficulties in a good connection between quality of work and life. From the other side the high level of paid and unpaid work, due to the assistance at home of children and elder people produces analogous difficulties in quality of work and children wellbeing. The results we present are relative to a research devoted to a “level of certification” of private Italian firms who respect equal opportunities between men and women.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 even with the composite group of experts involved. 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.