ROMA – “But if you know why this one gets more than me on the first day?!”…The answer: “That’s a man, right?!”. The exchange of jokes between Delia, protagonist of the successful film “There is still tomorrow” (2023) directed and interpreted by Paola Cortellesi, with her employer, contains the meaning of this week’s theme, in which the International Equal Pay Day, today September 18th. The film is set in the post-war period, but how much has the situation changed since then?
Women in Italy earn only 58% of men’s salaries. Despite significant progress, according to the report, “Education at a glance” (the instruction in brief) just released – we read on the website of theASviS, the Alliance for Sustainable Development – in Italy, female graduates earn only 58% of the salary of their male colleagues, a particularly significant disparity when compared with the average of other countries, where women earn on average 17% less than men.
A waste of talent. Which is not just about the wage gap: women are more often unemployed or have involuntary part-time jobs, with maternity their careers are penalized due to the lack of support and services, they have fewer opportunities to access top roles in companies and organizations.
The women-work-children issue. It is at the centre of political and public debate: from a recent speech by Mario Draghi, “The time of women”, to the Ambrosetti report on women’s empowerment presented at the Cernobbio Forum of September 6-8, up to the proposal of the Minister of Economy Giancarlo Giorgetti on aid for births, to cite the latest episodes. And it is placed at the center not only for a question of civilization and women’s rights, and not only because it concerns most of us (directly in the first person or your wives, friends, daughters), but also because it significantly influences the economy of our country. To reflect on the theme, let’s start with the speech of the former Prime Minister.
The unresolved issues of the problem of women’s work. That lack of time and unfavorable conditions are the core of the problem of female employment can be easily understood from everyday life experiences. When I meet other mothers at school, at work, at my daughters’ sports, the testimonies I hear always have many elements in common: most of them with their children had to leave work for organizational reasons, some have given up their dreams to necessarily opt for a part-time which gave more flexibility and allowed them to take care of children or elderly parents, others are not interested in giving babysitters all their earnings, still others tell me that “with motherhood they have missed the train of professional growth, compared to their male colleagues, not to mention the sexist jokes at work and inappropriate requests at job interviews if they are interested in becoming mothers soon.
The unexpected events of day after day. Of course, you can always organize yourself for management, but the truth is that everyday life as a working mother is full of unforeseen events, and if there are unforeseen events, it is often taken for granted that the woman has to resolve them.
– The school strike: this means that only that morning will it be discovered whether or not it will be possible to go to work, therefore the mother must be available;
– The poor service at the nursery school: if there are problems at the nursery school (broken radiators, no water or other) the mother has to rush to pick up her child from school;
– When your son or daughter has a fever: if your child is sick (at nursery every other day), he should be taken to the pediatrician and kept at home; a babysitter would hardly want to keep him with a fever;
– If the gym closes: If your daughter’s gymnastics gym closes for a month overnight due to municipal construction, all family planning goes out the window.
The role of grandparents, when they exist. These are examples of experiences lived by millions of women and that often raise the question: what do those who do not have grandparents available or do not have flexible work do? The network of grandparents plays a fundamental role in family planning for those who have them available, but with the increase in the age at which children are born and travel for work needs, many do not have grandparents available, or have them but they are not healthy and indeed perhaps need help, or live in another city.
When services become essential. And that’s where the importance of services comes into play. Services that are reliable, that give women time to dedicate to work, that can support them in managing unexpected events, perhaps even through networks of territorial collaborations. smart working It is gold for a mother, but it can also become a double-edged sword if poorly managed, generating stressful situations in which personal and professional life are so intertwined that women feel they are performing poorly in both their roles as workers and as mothers.
Respectful and flexible environments. We need work environments that respect women and family needs, that are flexible, that can accept the greater presence of women in top roles not because “they have to”, but to seize the opportunity afforded by diversity.
They need husbands. Let them not take it for granted that the management of the children and the house must fall first and foremost (if not exclusively) on their wives: if there are unforeseen events, it is a problem for both of them to resolve by taking turns.
When women leave the workforce. According to the Observatory onempowerment of women presented in Cernobbio, in 2022 over 44 thousand mothers in Italy left their jobs (equal to 73% of the total number of parents who resigned), 63% of them due to the difficulty of reconciling professional and private life, compared to 7% of fathers. Furthermore, Italy is the nation with the highest share of women with part-time involuntary in 27 EU countries (52.6% against an average of 23%).
Unpaid care work. According to the Observatory’s data, it emerges that a woman living in France, Italy, Spain or Germany (Big 4 EU) carries out on average 4.4 hours of unpaid care work per day, for an amount equivalent to a loss of 500 thousand euros during her working life.
The consequences of economic inequality. The issue of economic inequality, then, affects the entire life of women, influenced by the fact of having children at home, by the fact that men’s wages increase faster than women’s with the same level of education and work intensity, and by the greater concentration of the latter in sectors characterized by lower wages. An economic disadvantage that continues up to pensions.
The gender pension gap. In Italy this translates into an annual difference of 40 billion euros, according to a study published on EthicsEconomy It is attributable to the accumulation of disadvantages along the career path deriving mainly from two factors.
– The first onewhich has the greatest impact, concerns the segregation of women in work-family life paths that are “rewarded” differently by pension systems: the system requires a high minimum number of years of contributions to access a pension, but women experience discontinuous trajectories due to the tasks of caring for children and elderly patients or exit the labor market after the birth of a child, struggling to return full-time, especially due to the scarcity of childcare services, and therefore unable to access a pension due to the lack of contribution requirements.
– The second factor instead concerns the “rewards” which in some cases are unequal between men and women for similar life-work paths.
Parity would bring growth of 11 billion. Promoting women’s empowerment in the workplace is not only a crucial issue for social rights, but it is also a major opportunity for economic growth worth up to $11.1 trillion (12% of G20 GDP), according to the Ambrosetti study. In a context of global decline in the working-age population, failure to recognize the essential role of women in society and the economy will lead to even lower levels of productivity.
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– 2024-09-19 07:27:39
