Natality, one in 5 women loses their job when they become a mother

It’s easy to say birth rate. In Italy, one worker in five leaves the job market after becoming a mother and 72.8% of the resignation validations of new parents concern women.

This is also why the average number of children per woman is still decreasing, giving birth later than the European average, at 32 and a half years. And 2023 recorded a new historic low in births in Italy, stuck below 400 thousand children, with a decrease of 3.6% compared to the previous year. Women choose not to have children or have fewer children. And the contraction in the birth rate that has accompanied Italy for decades now also involves the foreign component of the population.

If the postponement of motherhood and low fertility are the result of numerous contributing causes, the data reveal that the more women’s participation in the labor market increases, the more the fertility rate increases. An element to take into due consideration in a job market that still suffers from a very strong gender gap.

Few are employed, even fewer if they have children

From the data of the Save the Children Report, it emerges that in Italy the female employment rate (aged 15-64 years) was 52.5% in 2023, a lower value than the European Union average (65.8% ) by as many as 13 percentage points. The difference between the employment rate of men and women in our country, in the same year, was 17.9 percentage points, much more marked than the differences observed at EU27 level (9.4 percentage points).

For women, the issue of balancing work and family remains critical for those who carry out unpaid care work in their family. An indicator of the difficulties that mothers face in reconciling family and work commitments is represented by the number of employed women between the ages of 25 and 54: compared to a female employment rate of 63.8%, women without children who work reach 68.7%, while only just over half of those with two or more minor children are employed (57.8%). On the contrary, for men of the same age, the total employment rate is 83.7%, with a variation ranging from 77.3% for those without children, up to 91.3% for those with a minor child and 91.6% for those with two or more.

Territorial disparities are also marked, to the detriment of the southern regions of Italy where for women, employment stops at 48.9% for those without children (79.8% in the north and 74.4% in the centre) and drops to 42% in the presence of minor children, reaching 40% for women with two or more minor children (73.2% in the north and 68.3% in the centre).

Voluntary resignation: opportunity for men, sacrifice for women

Even looking at the data on voluntary resignations after parenthood, it is clear how the birth of a child affects gender inequality in the world of work. It is mainly mothers who resign, with their first child and within the first year of life. In fact, during 2022, a total of 61,391 voluntary resignation validations were carried out for parents of children aged 0-3 throughout the national territory, an increase of 17.1% compared to the previous year. 72.8% of the total (equal to 44,699) concerns women, while 27.2% concerns men (equal to 16,692), with a greater growth of female ones compared to the previous year. And if for men the predominant motivation is of a professional nature, for women the main one is the difficulty in reconciling work and child care: 41.7% attributed this difficulty to the lack of assistance services, while 21 .9% indicated problems related to work organization. Overall, caregiving challenges accounted for 63.6% of all validation reasons given by working mothers.

Part time is female

The data also shows that in Italy, while full-time work is more common among men than women, the opposite is true for part-time work. Only 6.6% of men who work do so part-time, compared to 31.3% of women workers, who in half of the cases (15.4%) experience involuntary part-time work. Among those who have children, the percentage of women employed part-time increases significantly (36.7%) compared to those without children (23.5%). Among men, however, the figure goes from 8.7% for those without children to 4.6% for fathers.

Mother friendly regions

At the top of the ranking of the most mother friendly regions is once again the autonomous Province of Bolzano, followed by Emilia Romagna, while the last place goes to Basilicata, preceded by Campania and Sicily. Tuscany gains a position, taking third place. Among the regions that have improved the most compared to the previous year, Lazio goes from thirteenth to eighth place, gaining five positions and Lombardy goes from eighth to fourth.