ROME – One of hundreds of thousands of women in Italy who lost jobs in the pandemic, Laura Taddeo has a masters degree in tourism, speaks fluent English and Spanish and some Arabic, too.
Her contract as a tour operator with a high-end Italian hotel company expired in May, just as COVID-19 travel restrictions were crippling tourism, and it wasn’t renewed.
But whenever tourism does rebound, Taddeo, who cuts a confident figure, will brace for the job interview questions. “It’s not, ‘What have you studied?
What languages do you speak?’ but ‘Do you have a family? Do you intend to have children?”’ Taddeo, who is 33, said every man who has interviewed her asked her that right off the bat.