Gender Domains: Female Employment and Its Deterrents in the Mediterranean Multiverse

Abstract

The present work aims to highlight some elements that characterise the Mediterranean area in terms of representations and behavioural patterns. They contribute to slowing down the process of female modernisation in the public sphere and in the labour sphere in particular, enhancing certain traditionally female func-tions such as care. The following pages highlight, through the data of some statistical sources, the employment situation of women in the Mediterranean area. Further-more, making use of the concepts of ‘gender arrangements’ and ‘gender cultures’, they highlight how, to date, bio-capital strongly connotes the role of women in the Mediterranean and overrides the cultural and economic capital they bear. The Mediterranean area is thus described as a ‘Mediterranean multiverse’—a world in which the syncretism of European-Mediterranean and Afro-Mediterranean cultures emphasises that ‘care’ is the representation that best connotes the female universe and, as a direct effect, the posture in the occupational world is, even today, consid-ered to be the ‘most appropriate’ to the role that women represent not only in domestic life but also in social and working life.