Who is willing to give away 59 work days a year?

According to the EU Commission a woman works free for 2 months in respect to a man’s salary
In Italy it is a little better, but is worse regarding the level of unemployment in respect to males

In Europe a woman must work 59 days extra a year to earn as much as a man. It’s as if to say that from the beginning of 2013 to February 28th a man could be at home on the sofa and at the end of the month he would have the same paycheck as a female colleague, who does the same job with the same titles and the same seniority. According to evaluations by the European Commission on average a woman with the same role earns 16.2% less than a man. Numbers that in time slowly tend to decrease on a European level; it was 17% in 2010 and in Italy it is already under 5.4%.

If Italian women can therefore consider themselves in a fortunate situation regarding salaries, at least in respect to the Estonians, where women earn ¼ of a male’s salary, on the other hand, on the employment side, there is much to overcome. Italy is last in the race, in Europe second only to Malta, for the discrepancy between the number of women and number of men unemployed. A study published by Cse Pragma, a Socio-Economic Study Center, reveals this; they analyzed the female labor market in Italy by examining the IRR (Pink Regional Index), which allows correlating labor market and employment.

This new instrument, analyzing in detail a multiple of local data, for starters highlighted the territorial fragmentation of the phenomenon of unemployment for women. So, to obtain workplace gender equality, it reads in the report, “one single national policy is not enough to sufficiently synthesize such heterogeneous conditions, making it necessary to adopt complementary local and regional strategies.”

The solution to female unemployment, always concerning the results of the study, are not even found just by improving instruction and formation for women; there remains however one determining factor, but also analyzing other “short-term factors such as external and internal.” In other words, factors blocking many Italian women from entering the workforce are still too often cultural and social – or plainly, the lack of adequate childcare services.

Brussels cannot do anything except confront the problem on a collective level with initiatives in the report published last week by the European Parliament, with the recommendations of the member states for a better work market for females, and the International Women’s Day, which occurs every year on March 8th.

Camilla Tagino