ABSTRACT
During the months of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Italian media helped provide an unprecedented degree of exposure for women scientists. The essay highlights the results of a quantitative and qualitative study on the portrayal and self-portrayal of Italian women scientists based on the digital editions of eight daily national newspapers and ten talk shows on the main national television channels from February to May 2020. The aim of the study is to show if and how those women scientists were valued as ‘experts' or, alternatively, discredited professionally. The picture that emerges is ambivalent: on the one hand, most journalists of both sexes minimize the role of women scientists, and on the other hand, their ability to appear as authoritative in science as their male colleagues makes us optimistic about the role they can hypothetically play in convincing the new generation of Italian women to study STEM subjects. © 2023 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.
ABSTRACT
This paper presents the results of one of the first surveys carried out in Italy on the living and working conditions of public administration employees who were engaged in compulsory telework during the first stages of the COVID-19 pandemic (March–May 2020). Although this study examines a small sample of public workers in Campania region, interesting results emerge in a modelling implementation. In fact, by means of a heteroskedastic Ordered Probit model, some findings are presented with job satisfaction being the response variable. Considering the workers’ need to adjust to a completely novel situation, our results reveal a significant role played by a potential lack of concentration and by the satisfaction of using their own home as a workplace as well as by the differences experienced in work efforts. The presence of children in the household turns out to be slightly significant, whereas childcare duties do seem to exert some impacts on job satisfaction, implying relevant effects on work-life balance. Workers’ concern regarding a possible lack of recognition of their job by supervisors or managers is also highlighted. © 2022, ASA Associazione per la Statistica Applicata. All rights reserved.