Friuli Venezia Giulia is first in Italy for the presence of artisan businesses led by women: they represent 24.5% of the total active artisan businesses. The region leaves the two other realities on the podium, the Marche (22.8%) and Emilia Romagna, at a certain distance, where female artisans at the head of companies represent 22.7 percent. Female employment in general is decidedly higher than the Italian average, but below the European average, which in Friuli Venezia Giulia reaches 62.8 percent, almost ten points above the Italian average (53.4) and three points below the European one , which stands at 66.1 percent.
It is the cross-section that was highlighted by the Report «Businesses and women’s work in the era of uncertainty. Between the present and the feminine future” drawn up by the Studies Office of Confartigianato Impese and the MPI Observatory of Confartigianato Lombardia.
«This data which is already significant in itself is even more so if placed in the general dynamics of the vitality of the companies – states Filomena Avolio, president of the Movimento Donne Impresa of Confartigianato Fvg and of Udine, an area which boasts the largest number of female artisan businesses in the our region and which exceeds the national average -: in Italy on an annual basis, female entrepreneurship grew by 8,340 units, equal to 0.9%, while in the same period the total number of companies decreased by 3,167 units, equal to – 0.1 percent.”
At the same time, however, Avolio underlines that much remains to be done to allow women to realize all their entrepreneurial and professional potential, supporting them in balancing work-life and consolidating their business. With a warning: «It is convenient for everyone to encourage female employment also to create the conditions for sustainability of the current socio-economic system». And he specifies: «To sustain the so-called “pension peak expected for 2040, i.e. the peak of pension expenditure in relation to GDP, it would be necessary, for example, to increase the number of employed people. Which takes on a particular significance if we consider that Italy has the lowest employment rate in the EU and Friuli Venezia Giulia is also more than three percentage points away from the European average.” Therefore, concludes Avolio, «increasing female employment, in the self-employed as well as in the dependent component, could strengthen the sustainability of pensions. Structural measures are needed, not the same for everyone but fair, to minimize the gap between genders and generations, truly offering equal opportunities for male and female workers. However, everything becomes difficult if there is no concrete support and recognition of the value of women’s work, including that of family care, which even today, unfortunately, is carried out almost exclusively by women and is not recognized or remunerated”, concludes Avolio.
