If you are fed up with hearing about the model Ruby and other young women who have allegedly been involved with Mr Berlusconi and other politicians, you need look no further than the Financial Times, which lists Italian businesswoman Emma Marcegaglia at number 29 in its table of the top 50 most powerful women managers in the world.
Ms Marcegaglia, sometimes known as the “steel lady” or “Black and Decker”, is Chief Executive of Marcegaglia, the company founded by her father, Steno, in 1959. The company is the world’s largest producer of steel tubes and has 50 maunufacturing plants around the world. In 2008 Emma Marcegaglia became the first woman president of the Italian employers’ federation, Confindustria.
She is the only Italian woman on the FT list and this could be related to the fact that, according to a recent survey by Istat [the Italian Statistics Office] women in Italy still do 76.2% of household chores despite the fact that more of them have full time jobs than ever before. Italian men only help out in the home for nine minutes longer than they did in 2003 and, disappointingly, they do not usually help with the washing or ironing but garden, cook or play with the children. However, there is hope, as younger men from the middle and higher income brackets do take on more domestic chores, especially in Northern Italy.
Meanwhile, Newsweek, under the title, “Not Berlusconi’s Bimbos”, is celebrating Italian women in a series of photographs of the country’s best known female high achievers: Nobel laureate Rita Levi Montalcini Rita Levi Montalcini, author and journalist Oriana Fallaci, Carla Bruni, early feminist Anna Maria Mozzoni and, of course, Sophia Loren are all there.
