Brussels, we have a problem. In Italy there is, among European countries, the lowest female participation rate in the labor market. And things have precipitated with the Covid-19 pandemic: female employment has reached an all-time low, 48%. In practice, only one in two women has a job and very often they are part-time contracts – a condition suffered, and not chosen – which therefore see lower wages. Not only that, with the pandemic, many women have had to give up their work to look after young children, often in DAD. Confirming a disturbing fact: the employment rate of women with children under the age of 5 is more than 25 per cent lower than that of their peers without children.
Not too many days ago the President of the Draghi Council in the Senate he remarked strongly: «Italy presents today one of the Worse wage gaps between genders in Europe, in addition to a chronic shortage of women in important managerial positions. True gender equality does not mean a pharisaic respect for women’s quotas required by law. It requires that equal competitive conditions between genders be guaranteed. We intend to work in this sense, aiming at a rebalancing of the wage gap and a welfare system that allows women to devote the same energy to their career as their male colleagues, overcoming the choice between family or work “.
Beautiful words to be followed by deeds, thanks to PNRR, which made the relaunch of female employment a fundamental theme for the economic and social growth of the country. «Promote the creation of women’s businesses and the introduction of certification of gender equality. Achieve the full economic and social emancipation of women in the labor market, providing for a systematization and restructuring of the current support tools, with a vision that is more in keeping with the needs of women, through an integrated strategy of financial investments and support services for the promotion of “female entrepreneurship”. The introduction of a national system of certification of gender equality aims to support companies in reducing the gaps in the professional growth of women and wage transparency ». This is how the PNRR is explicitly among the objectives to be pursued among labor policies, allocating a total of 6.6 billion euros.
The goal for the next three years is to get to an increase in the work of women by 4% with the imposition that for new hires at least one third of them is aimed at women. This will be possible by activating projects of various kinds, ranging from training to job placement, but also incentives and ad hoc measures. The plan also provides for an increase of up to 40% in permanent hiring of female researchers, with universities making databases of female curricula available. Specifically, the “Women’s enterprise fund” will be established, with 400 million in loans that will go to finance female businesses. At the center of the Plan there will also be schools with significant funding, nursery schools and preschools, increasing the number of structures and therefore of staff. Because the emancipation of women also passes through support for the family.
Other Vanity Fair stories that may interest you:
Coronavirus, smart working? For women it is not at all
Coronavirus, more than half of those who lost their jobs are women
Source: Vanity Fair
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