Italian engineering company picks women for jobs losses

ITALY has got to be a strange place to be a woman. One the one hand, you have Silvio Berlusconi hiring every attractive female in sight for some of the country’s top jobs, yet, on the other hand, you have a firm sacking all of the women on their payroll — because women are “better off in the home”.

Major controversy has erupted in Inzago in Milan after an engineering firm made almost half its workforce redundant and selected only women for the cuts.

Ma-Vib, a family-owned business, which makes electric fans and blowers for air conditioners, refrigeration and heating equipment employed 30 people, 12 of whom were men and 18 women. Forced into redundancies due to the economic downturn, the company decided it needed 13 redundancies and chose all women.