Da Roit, B.

Since the 1990s European conservative-corporatist welfare states have expanded public support for child-and eldercare needs. This is in marked contrast to Southern European countries, of which Italy is a paradigmatic example. In Italy, the traditional configuration (limited development of social services coupled with the importance of informal care, mainly provided by women) has recently come under strain, also because of the increasing employment of women.

Given the growth of care needs, the emphasis on informal care and the increasing labour force participation of women and senior workers, balancing employment and elderly care responsibilities is a crucial challenge. This qualitative study explores how and with what implications Italian senior workers combine work with care for older people. The results indicate that the impact of care responsibilities on work is limited and that employment has a buffer effect on overwhelming care responsibilities. By contrast the implications for private and family life are considerable.

This article investigates the relationship between the 'gender informal care gap' - the relative contributions of women to informal care for non-co-resident relatives and other members of social networks, compared to men - and public care policies, level of care needs, labour market position and gendered care attitudes. Since the literature suggests that none of these factors alone can explain the gender informal care gap, we develop a model based on fuzzy-set/qualitative comparative analysis in order to identify patterns in the relationship between the factors.

Intergenerational solidarity within families is the traditional source of support for dependent elderly people in southern European countries, where care needs have been mainly fulfilled by the unpaid work of women. Recently, the decline of informal care and the persistent lack of supply of formal services have been accompanied by the growth of commercial services mostly provided by migrant women hired by families in the grey market. The article is based on a qualitative study and explores the social processes underlying these changes.