Craftsmen, women are in charge. And it’s certainly not a figure of speech, given that there are many businesses led by what is improperly called the “weaker sex” in the region, to the point that Friuli Venezia Giulia is the first in Italy due to the presence of artisan businesses that are in the hands of women. The numbers speak for themselves: female-led businesses, in fact, represent 24.5% of the total active artisan businesses.
THE RANKING
The Friuli Venezia Giulia region leaves at a certain distance the two other realities on the podium, the Marche (22.8%) and Emilia Romagna, 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.
THE REPORT
These are the data that emerge from the cross-section that the Report highlighted «Businesses and women’s work in the era of uncertainty. Between the present and the female future” drawn up by the Confartigianato Imprese research office and the Confartigianato Lombardia Mpi Observatory. «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 has grown by 8,340 unitsequal to 0.9%, while in the same period the total number of companies decreased by 3,167 units, equal to -0.1 percent”.
THE FUTURE
President Filomena Avolio at the same time, however, underlines that There is still a lot to do to allow women to realize their full entrepreneurial and professional potentialsupporting them in work-life balance and business consolidation.
THE PASSAGE
With a warning, the female head of the association puts her hands forward. «It is convenient for everyone to encourage female employment also to create the conditions for sustainability of the current socio-economic system». He then 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.”
PENSIONS
The importance of women’s work, therefore, is evident in the face of the fact that only with greater employment of women will it be easier to get over the top of 2024, the most dangerous pension front, as mentioned. «Therefore – concludes the Friulian president Avolio – increasing female employment, in the self-employed component as well as in the dependent one, 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 paid.” The fact remains that Friuli Venezia Giulia has provided its contribution, at least on this front, being, as the Lombardy association’s survey well explained, the percentage of artisan businesses led by women not only higher than the national average, but the first in Italy. A success that could be an incentive to continue to do better.
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