Every evening when health experts updated anxious Italians in televised briefings about their nation’s devastating coronavirus outbreak, the lineup of authoritative figures included only one woman: the sign-language interpreter.

And not a single woman was among the 20-member commission appointed to advise the government on how and when Italy could safely re-open its factories, stores, schools and parks — a disparity all the more glaring because more than half the country’s doctors and three-quarters of its nurses are women, many on the heroic front lines of the pandemic.