In Italy and across the European Union, every country, in different ways and to different extents, reveals a gender gap in unpaid care work.
As we began to question what unpaid care work truly consists of, we realized that it extends far beyond caring for the home, raising children, or supporting elderly and sick family members. It also involves organizing schedules, planning ahead, and constantly anticipating household or community needs, the invisible effort often referred to as the “mental load”. Unpaid care work is the everyday labour that sustains households, families, and entire communities, yet remains largely unseen and undervalued.
The project explores the distribution of unpaid care work across Europe, with a specific focus on Italy. It highlights how the burden of unpaid care work falls unequally on women, placing Italy as the fourth worst country in the European Union in terms of the size of the gender gap.
The storytelling has an optimistic approach on the topic that raises awareness and instills action. The colour palette shifts from the traditional blue for men and pink for women to run away from stereotypes. Moreover, warm tones are chosen to create a comfort and caring atmosphere.
*This poster displays only binary data, due to the unavailability of data outside the gender binaries.
An introduction to unpaid care work and the gender gap in European Union countries
Focus on the gender gap in unpaid care work in Italy
Projection of the closure of the gap in Italy, calculated by projecting the interpolating line of the available data
The physicalization visualizes a projection of when the unpaid care work gender gap in Italy is expected to close.
It begins with the current situation in 2024, where the imbalance (71% by women and 29% by men) is represented on a table through two piles of everyday objects associated with unpaid care tasks, such as clothes, pots, spoons, gloves, and diapers.
Above the installation, a sequence of calendars makes the passage of time tangible, guiding the viewer toward a second table that represents the year 2090, where the same objects are finally redistributed evenly: 50% for women and 50% for men.
By making the passage of years physically perceptible, the physicalization invites viewers to reflect on the persistence of inequality and to question their own role: “is there anything you can do in your daily life to make this change happen faster?”
