Cultural employment and gender gap: Italy lags behind Europe

Strasbourg – Over the past nine years, the European Union has made significant progress in reducing the gender gap in employment in the cultural sector, bringing men and women closer to near parity. According to data published by Eurostat on July 8, 2025, the gender gap has shifted from 6.4% in 2015 (when 53.2% of those employed in the cultural sector were men and 46.8% were women) to a minimum gap of 0.8% in 2024. Today, men account for 50.4% of cultural employment and women for 49.6%, a milestone that testifies to an important structural change in many countries.

However, the Italian picture stands out negatively. Italy ranks with Spain as one of the countries where the disparity remains most marked: in 2024, men outnumber women in cultural employment by approximately 10 percentage points. This figure is significantly worse than the European average and confirms a trend that is struggling to reverse in our country.

The gap is not limited to mere labour participation, but is also reflected in wages. The four-year earnings structure survey (SES) found that, in 2022, 16.1 per cent of women employed in selected cultural activities received a low wage (defined as two-thirds or less of the national average gross hourly earnings) compared to 11.2 per cent of men. A wage inequality that highlights a still-deep-rooted pay equity problem, despite the apparent numerical balance in several European states.

The Eurostat report also highlights that, despite a positive trend at the European level, the differences between countries remain pronounced. The ten percentage point gap separating men and women in Italy is one of the highest in the Union, a sign of a structural imbalance that affects not only participation but also the distribution of job opportunities across the territory (Eurostat, July 2025).

The report also highlights a variable gender gap between the different Member States. In sixteen states of the Union, the presence of women in cultural employment has now surpassed that of men: the most significant cases are Latvia, where women occupy 32.6% more positions than men, and Estonia, with a positive gap of 24.2%.

In light of these data, Italy faces the challenge of promoting more incisive policies to support women’s cultural employment, reduce precariousness, and guarantee fairer wages. A commitment that appears increasingly necessary to align with the European objectives of inclusion and equal opportunities, and not to lag behind the progress made by most other member states.