Hospitality Management 20 (2001) 61–76 Women’s employment in Italian and UK hotels Liz Doherty a, *, Simonetta Manfredi b a School of Hotel and Restaurant Management, Department of HRM, Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane, Headington, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK b Directorate of Human Resources, Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane, Headington, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK Abstract This article uses secondary and primary data to compare and contrast the experience of women in the Italian and UK labour markets. It explores differences in national social policies and the impact of these on employment practices in the hotel industry in each country. It demonstrates that although Italy has a stronger legal framework to support women, their job opportunities are limited and the favourable maternity rights, in particular, appear to be disadvantaging women. By comparison, it shows how fast economic transformation has increased opportunities for women in the UK, but that these tend to be in numerically flexible jobs which are vulnerable to economic fluctuation. The article moves on to evaluate each Government’s approach to implementing the European Directive on Parental Leave, and concludes that EU attempts at convergence through legislation are unlikely to be effective as different countries will interpret and implement the legislation in very different ways. # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Women; Legislation; Equality; Family-friendly; Italy; United Kingdom 1. Introduction This article presents the latest findings from a substantial cross-national study of women’s employment in the hotel and catering industry in France, Italy, Spain and the UK. The first two stages of the research have already been presented in this journal (Burrell et al., 1997). The first stage involved an evaluation of women’s employment based mainly on secondary sources, and the second stage consisted of a postal survey conducted in all four countries. The final stage of the research took the *Corresponding author. Tel.: +44-1865-483810; fax: +44-1865-483878. E-mail addresses: ejdoherty@brookes.ac.uk (L. Doherty), smanfredi@brookes.ac.uk (S. Manfredi). 0278-4319/01/$ - see front matter # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII:S0278-4319(00)00040-2