“Equal work deserves equal pay: this is a founding principle of the European Union. (…) We must empower women so they can realize their potential. (…) Everyone benefits when everyone is equal“.
They stated it Věra Jourovávice president for Values and Transparency, e Helena DalliCommissioner for Equality, on the occasion of the Equal Pay Daywhich this year was celebrated on November 15, a date that symbolizes the number of additional days that women must work until the end of the year to earn as much as men in the same year.
In the EU in 2019, the employment rate for childless women was 67%, while for men it stood at 75%. When considering work with the presence of a child, the rate increases to 72% for women and 87% for men. For women with two children, the rate remains almost unchanged at 73 percent, while that for men increases to 91 percent. (ISTAT). This gap in Italy it also exerts and multiplies its effects from a social security perspective, as reported by the INPS in the latest Report (October 2023) where a gap of almost 38% is recorded.
The gender pay gap (raw) is the average difference in gross hourly pay between women and men
Analyzing Eurostat data updated to 2023, in Italy a woman earns on average 5% less per hour of work than a man. With the exception of Luxembourg (-0.2%), in all other countries women still earn less than men (in Estonia the difference is 20.5%). The European average, however, is 12.7%.
To get a complete picture, however, we need to look at the overall pay gap, which measures the impact of three combined factors: average hourly pay, average monthly number of paid hours and employment rate. In these terms, the wage difference in Italy reaches 43% (against a European average of 36.2%).
As an analysis by the European Parliament explains, in some EU states “lower pay gaps tend to be linked to lower participation of women in the labor market”. On the contrary, “higher gaps tend to be linked to a high percentage of women working part-time or to their concentration in a small number of professions”. However, it remains possible to identify structural causes of the gender wage gap.
Between career and family
Balancing careers and family. In 2018, looking at Eurostat data, a third of employed women in the European Union suffered a break from work for reasons related to child care. It happened to men only in 1.3% of cases. The care work often entrusted to women thus reduces the time to dedicate to paid work: almost a third of women work part-time, compared to 8% of men.
Jobs for “women”
And again, according to the European Commission, among the causes of gender pay gap there is also an over-representation of women in generally low-wage work sectors: care, healthcare, education. Furthermore, in 2020, women in management positions in the EU were 34% (just over a third), despite representing half of the employees. And in any case, even when women are managers, they do not earn as much as their male colleagues. Again according to data provided by the EU Commission, they receive 23% less per hour.
European policies
Remaining within European borders, we are trying in various ways to overcome the gender pay gap. New rules approved in 2023 will, for example, combat salary secrecy: workers will have the right to receive information on pay for their job category
And again: in the event that the mandatory salary declaration of a company, or a public administration, shows a gap of at least 5%, employers will have to carry out a salary assessment in cooperation with their employees’ representatives. Member States are then asked to introduce effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions for all employers who do not comply with European rules. When the violation of the rules causes damage, the legislation also provides the right to request compensation.
A comparative historical analysis
In 2004 the employment of women under 33 was at 44%, in Sicily at 33%. It should be considered, in this regard, that the full-time schooling of minors in Sicily is well below 10%.
At a national level, the average salary for men is 26,277 euros, while for women it is 18,305. Furthermore, Italy is last in Europe for part-time work (33%). Since the 2008 crisis, there has been an increase in non-voluntary and temporary part-time work. This, especially in large-scale distribution companies. An increase that is three times the European average for women in Europe. The same increase was recorded for part-time men in Italy which is, in this special ranking, first in Europe. In Italy, then, women work part time at 32%, 40% in voluntary work, 60% involuntary (the OECD tells us that in the Netherlands involuntary part time stands at 2%, voluntary part time at 98%) .
In the South, 75% of part-time work is involuntary, in the North, 60%
The drop in the presence of women in STEM subjects (scientific and mathematics) is significant. According to sociologist Sabbadini, “there is a deliberate discouragement of women with gender stereotypes in schools.” In Italy, the wage difference between men and women in the private sector has reached almost 8 thousand euros a year in 2022: the latest data fromObservatory on private sector employees of the INPS, record a gender pay gap of 7,922 euros. The overall average annual salary is 22,839 euros: for men it is 26,227 euros; for women it drops by almost 30%, to 18,305 euros. The disparities are striking, both by age and by territory (average salaries in the North are equal to 26,933 euros, those in the South and on the Islands are 16,959 and 16,641 euros), confirming the web of inequalities that envelops the peninsula.
The measures that matter
«The INPS report has finally underlined why the ‘happy’ data often referred to Italy on gender pay gap has so far been completely distorted»he comments Constance Hermanin, president of EquALL which, on the European Day for Equal Pay, last 15 November, involved many other associations (including The Good Lobby, Committee Ventotene, Road to 50, Period Think Tank, Tocca a Noi, Pari Merito, BASE Italy, Free to Abortire) for the demonstration “The Measures that Count”, in Piazza del Pantheon. A marathon with flash mobs against wage, gender and intergenerational inequalities.
The photograph of the gap
«Until now – explains Hermanin – we have always been placed at the top of the European rankings on wage disparities, but only because we took the public sector collective agreements as a reference and in particular, as the Istat manager has often explained, Linda Laura Sabbadinithose of managerial contracts where there are many highly educated women». Now, finally, clarity has been made, giving «more plausible and precise measures of the enormous gap that exists in Italy also based on the types of contracts, which for women are much more often part time than for men, therefore paid less overall and on average per hour». Part-time contracts, characterized by significant breaks between one and the other, which lead to a pension gap of 40 percent.
The burden of unpaid work
Even the new data, however, do not give the complete measure of gender inequalities in Italy, which are significantly affected by non-work and unpaid work.
«We are permanently the country in Europe with the lowest female participation rate and with the largest gap between men and women (around 60-40) who work or are looking for work»recalls the president of EquaLL, Constance Hermaninadding that «however, when it comes to unpaid care work, we are at the top of the charts: up to four times more time is dedicated by Italians to the elderly, children and home than men».
A protest against all inequalities
Since these data are worsening, rather than improving (last year Italy lost 16 positions in the Global Gender Gap Index of the World Economic Forum), EquaLL has also involved entities that do not have gender or wage equality as their first mission in collecting data. data underlying the “measures that matter”. The goal is to highlight all disparities.
«Those Chambers – he concludes Hermanin in the interview given on November 13th to Manuela Perrone, of the “Sole 24 Ore” – what measures they should adopt and implement, given that November 15th symbolically marks the day in which European women, and together with them Italian women, will stop earning for the current year, while their male companions will be paid until December 31st».
Victor Matteucci
