“You work, or you go. So you always feel restricted to go to work, also when you can’t, also during the holiday. You cannot ask, you are always “the lowest” – KENYAN WOMEN IN INTERVIEW PALERMO
As a solution to this kind of exploitation, it was argued to have information sessions on the rights and duties of employers and employees (because in Italian research in came forward that both sides might not know what is expected of them), as well as courage and confidence which could help the women to defend themselves and stand up for their rights.
EXPERIENCES OF EMPLOYERS When asking employers about their experiences with women, they would almost always respond positively. In Italy employers said that women were “bringing diversity to the work floor”, “intercultural dialogue”, “bringing new languages”, “work hard” and are “humble”. Iceland employers talked about migrants and their work ethics in comparison with Icelandic workers. “Migrant women (and men) have high work ethics. It might be because they don’t know their rights to have sick leaves, make doctor’s appointment, etc”. English employers said that from their experience, the migrant women they hired were the best person for the job and it was not about where they were from or their sex. This would be the same response in the Italian focus groups or interviews with employers. However English employers acknowledged that there are prejudices but it depends on the company or employers how much influence these prejudices have on the possibility of hiring women. In conclusion, migrant women face double discrimination in all four countries although this phenomenon has different degrees of intensity depending on each country. Italy is the country where double discrimination is definitely at its highest level, followed by Greece, United Kingdom and Iceland. Even though double discrimination is transversal to all four countries, it appears that in UK and Iceland it does not affects the work environment which tends to be more open. On the contrary, migrant women working in Italy are constantly discriminated, this could go as far as ending up in straight-out racist behaviours against migrant women and even types of sexual harassment. The situation in Greece is milder but sadly still tending towards the same direction. Another transversal issue migrant women face in all four countries is occupational segregation. Again, its intensity varies considerably along the four countries. In Italy and Greece for instance the large part of migrant women work force is employed in the housekeeping/caregiving sector. In UK roughly 30% of employed migrant women work as carers, nurses and midwives. In Iceland, migrant women tend to take on those jobs which
Erasmus+ KA2: Strategic Partnership | VET - Project ref.no. 2017-1-IS01-KA202-026533
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