Le istituzioni locali e il mondo associativo per la costruzione di una rete in materia di cooperazione, cultura di pace, integrazione multietnica, promozione dei diritti umani e della solidarietà fra i popoli.
Women workers in Europe: lower pay and more responsabilities
According to the European Commission, women in Europe earn 15% less than men. The gender pay gap reflects all the inequalities for women in the labour market. In the meantime Italy has been pointed out by the Financial Time.
The pay gap- Despite European girls are better at school than boys and greater number are the female university graduates than male, the gender pay gap is of 15%: Vladimir Spidla, EU employment Commissioner, presents a situation in which discrimination is not the only reason. In fact there are other factors determining the gap, such as the quality and the quantity of work done by women. In general women works are more likely to be unpaid or part-time jobs, plus the fact that those occupations, mostly female workforce, are often on lower pay scales. Conciliating work and family is very difficult for women, so often they prefer part time jobs or break career to devote themselves to their family.
Moreover skills typically associated with women are frequently less valued than those associated with men. Jobs requiring similar qualifications tend to pay less when dominated by women rather than men. For example in many European countries nannies earn less than car mechanics, and nurses less than policemen.
Men are likely to climb the career ladder and make it into managerial positions, whereas women more frequently get to the point of career breaks, often due to their family responsibilities.
Age, education and years of work- According to statistics, the gender pay gap raises with age, level of education and years of work. It goes over 30% if women are 50/59 years old, whereas it’s “only” 7% if they are less than 30 years old. The difference is the same, 30%, for female university graduates, whereas 13% for women who have a lower level of education. Also “loyalty” is not rewarded: the pay gap is 32% for women who have worked more than 30 years in the same company.
Italy under indictment – While European Commission reflects about the future of women workers, Italian women have been put under indictment by the British newspaper The Financial Times . Adrian Micheals, foreign correspondent in Italy, is shocked by the image of Italian women which emerge from advertising and television. They appear more often half naked, and so to be prone to sexual object position than management one.
If it’s true that “is the demand that creates the supply”, unfortunately it’s also true that Italian women are the less represented in Europe in management position: only 11% of female parliamentary and 2% of women in direction positions (whereas for example in Scandinavian countries there are 23% and in USA 15%). In fact the part-time job is rare in Italy where too often women are obliged to choose between work and family.
Survey- According to a survey published this year ( Eurobarometro January 2007) European citizens are aware of the difficult situation of women workers. 68% think that family responsibilities represent the greater obstacle to career, whereas 47% think that women with the same qualifications get less benefits than men.
Despite that, women are seen as good manager (77%) and parliamentary (72%) by a larger proportion of European people. So it’s necessary filling up this gender gap involving women, men, ONGs, associations and Governments to promote and to sustain European target.
