Conference Program

The contribution draws inspiration from the results of qualitative research conducted by INAPP, in collaboration with Save the Children Italy, as part of the Nationale Programme "Young Women and Work" co-financed by the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) 2021-2027. The survey focusing on the condition of young women living in disadvantaged socio-economic conditions and facing educational poverty, covered four Italian metropolitan cities - Naples, Rome, Palermo, and Turin. Based on a number of in-depth interviews and focus groups with experts, the INAPP study analyses the educational paths of girls and young women, paying particular attention to early school leaving and dropout, and to labour and social inclusion processes, viewed through an intersectional perspective of gender (especially), age, class, and territory.

Among the many elements collected, several are in line with the key themes of the 4th SD Conference. Here, we want to highlight how the short stories told by the girls reveal a very different reality from the narrative contained in the NEET category, a sort of implicit critical review of the category's representative capacity, inadequate to grasp and make visible the complexity of the lack of participation of young women in education, training, and employment.

Moreover, interviews reveal young women who are anything but inactive, providing further evidence of the weakness of the NEET lens. In addition to being "normally" engaged in family care work, as usual marginalized by analysis and policies, these young women are often employed, or rather underemployed, in out-of-home activities, usually poorly (very poorly) paid, in jobs that, presented in all their murky shades of grey, bear the hallmarks of poor quality work. From this perspective, girls' early entry into the labour market, unless accompanied and indeed preceded by appropriate policy interventions, is likely to backfire rather than being a valuable resource for future success and autonomy, on-the-job training in poor work is training to become poor, marginalised, invisible workers.

In short, the stories of these girls shift the focus to the shortcomings of the education and vocational training system. Although schools claim to be inclusive, they generate mechanisms of silent exclusion such as the critical transitions between school levels, the cumulative effects of previous gaps, and the difficulty of embracing cultural and linguistic diversity without turning it into stigmatized deficits. For girls, this process of exclusion is intertwined with specific gender barriers - low self-esteem, family expectations, relational control dynamics - that weaken their relationship with the educational institution even before it becomes so fragile with the labour market. The NEET status, as mentioned, is not particularly relevant to the girls interviewed. Far from being the result of an individual choice or failure, it appears to be the outcome of cumulative processes that become entrenched throughout their lives: from early school leavings in primary school to critical transitions between school levels, to the intertwining of girls' expectations, gender stereotypes, family dynamics, and relational control that distances girls from education even before they start seeking for a job.