What to really do to encourage female employment
We've been talking about it for decades, yet a real solution is still missing to enable Italian women to be able to work and have children. The speech by Alessandra Servidori
President Mattarella and Pope Francis have carried out a so-called "positive action" by recalling the issue of the fight against violence against women as a serious problem. But a certain hypocrisy evidently hovers in the folds of Italian politics and society.
We have been writing for decades, we have acted like tired but tireless Don Quixote against the windmills of complaints without a real cultural or concrete solution, without seeing tools that could truly reverse the economic trend and enable Italian women to be able to work and do also children. A spot in the budget laws, perhaps only for one year, some measures seem to provide answers, but this is not the case; and let's not be surprised if even today 20% of Italian mothers of working age abandon their jobs because they can't balance their time living, caring and working. And perhaps even in the newspapers these days gender certification is being promoted as a virtuous solution, when in fact it is evidently only and exclusively an economic advantage for companies: indeed, it is even yet another illusion regarding women's skin.
THE LACK OF POLICIES FOR WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT
The guilty lack of policies in favor of the employment of those who represent as many as 53% of Italian citizens is an unbearable chant that now accompanies the usual utterances without coherence in action "the female employment rate here is 51.2%. If it reached 60%, GDP would grow by 7%."
Some depressing examples. The strengthening of female inactivity following the extension of the NASpI to parents with children aged 0 to 3 who voluntarily resign pursuant to art. 55 of the Consolidated Law no. 151/2000. Even this year compared to last year they increased by 17.1% and the drama mainly concerns women as always with 72.8% of workers, i.e. 44 thousand resignations validated and is absolutely linked to the great irreconcilability between work and family.
The issue of equal pay which does not yet exist, since the gender pay gap is the difference between the gross hourly wages of men and women, and is based on the salaries paid directly to employees before tax deductions and social security contributions . The strengthening of the pay gap is a consequence of part-time work, professional choices related to family load, more women in low-paid sectors, fewer female and lower-paid managers and above all the conversion of the productivity bonus into a company welfare quota.
Beyond many companies that define themselves as family friendly , we must remember that the productivity bonus represents the additional amount to the salary that is paid to employees upon achieving increases in productivity, profitability, quality, efficiency and innovation. Within the remuneration structure it is the variable part of the salary, usually the subject of second level negotiation and therefore the less you work and are absent for reasons of leave the less you get in your pay slip.
MATHEMATICS LEAVES GIRLS BEHIND
At the same time as the promise to intervene with the Pnrr, we are at the top of a very fragile ranking for scientific subjects in schools. Mathematics leaves girls behind, and the latest OECD-Pisa survey elects our country as the one with the largest gender gap in learning the subject through the Program for international student assessment (Pisa) , since 2000, has been measuring the skills of fifteen-year-old students in three main areas: mathematics, reading and science, considered "fundamental to fully participate in social and economic life" shows us a disappointing truth. If the general level of preparation in mathematics has fallen in all OECD countries, recording a drop of 16 points, the most significant data for our country is that relating to the gender differences in the scores recorded in this discipline, where the gap between males and females favors the former by 21 points, far above the average of OECD countries, where it is 9 points.
Even the percentage of those with high skills – which allow them to carry out more complex and abstract tasks, and who are therefore top performers – sees Italian girls penalized compared to boys in mathematics (4% versus 10%).
GENDER CERTIFICATION IN SMEs
On November 6, the equal opportunities department started granting contributions for the gender certification of small and medium-sized companies with 10 million in my opinion wasted because only the certification bodies are enriched and women are not truly helped, a banal tool for companies (a sort of pink sticker already badly experimented first in 2006 at the Ministry of Labor and then in 2014 at the equal opportunities department to have advantages with law no. 162 -2021 which from 2022 for 50 million euros per year provides for an exemption from the payment of social security contributions and the recognition of a reward score for the evaluation by the disbursement of European funds to companies).
WHAT TO DO, SERIOUSLY
To truly help women's employability, much more is needed. Meanwhile, regarding the extension of smart working for female workers with children up to 14 years of age, "crafty so-called company policies" are already being pre-packaged in which they are asked to sign forms for a weekly restriction of the tool, thus cutting the throats of those who have the right to use it, and it is clearly a threatening limitation.
We need to change the register and contractual mentality if we want to support women by applying the bilateral system within companies with Funds that recognize working flexibility and are used both by workers who need greater flexibility to combine family commitments with work and otherwise. giving contribution incentives that do not resolve the presence of women in the workplace in the medium term.
The bilateral system is the subject of confederal agreements which have already been signed and which make use of subsidiarity funds between workers and employers and which now work perfectly on the training side: it is appropriate to shift some resources to this item and therefore address thus culturally and contractually the issue of flexibility and corporate organization.
Thus female employability is supported since employability also means economic autonomy and freedom, also excluding submission and violence. We cannot continue to affirm pro-European harmony when we certainly have ancient legislation on maternity but then we do not have adequate parental leave, unconstitutional wage gaps, lack of nursery schools and support teachers for fragile students, dispersion and school dropouts not even clearly traced , a training/work apprenticeship that is still negligible.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/cosa-fare-davvero-per-favorire-occupazione-femminile/ on Wed, 03 Jan 2024 07:01:11 +0000.