Women In Italy Are Becoming Increasingly Educated, But Female Employment Rates Are Low
The role of women in the modern world will be one of the central themes of the Synodal Assembly held in the Vatican. Meanwhile, the Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) released the results of a study that drew attention to the gap between women’s education levels in Italy and their employment rates.
According to ISTAT analysts, firstly, “women in Italy are more educated than men: 65.7% of women aged 25 to 64 have at least a degree, compared to 60.3% of men.” Women graduates make up 23.5% of the total (only 17.1% among men). And the gap between the number of women who have at least a higher education and men who do not is “constantly increasing.” In Italy, differences of this kind “are more pronounced than the situation recorded on average in other countries of the European Union.”
However, the “female advantage in university education” does not translate into an “employment advantage” in Italy: women’s employment rate is much lower than men’s employment rate – 57.3% for women versus 78% for men – and the gap in 2022-2023 has become even wider.
It was noted that “employment differentials” are gradually decreasing, as the level of education “increases” (32.5 points for low qualifications, 21 for medium qualifications and 7.7 points for high qualifications), due to an increase in the female employment rate, compared to men’s. In other words, the employment rate among Italian graduates with higher education is 18.4 points higher than among graduates with secondary education. At the same time, among women graduates with secondary education, the corresponding indicator is 25.8 points higher than among women with at most incomplete secondary education. For men, the employment rate (graduates with higher and secondary education) is 5.1 points and 14.3 points, respectively.
Among Italian women, the difference compared to the similar European average “decreases as the level of education increases”: among female graduates, the employment rate is 4.7 points lower than the European Union average, a difference equal to about half of that observed for intermediate and incomplete levels.
