Female presence advances at the top of rental companies

Both Rossi and Tavazza have held the position of vice-president of the Aniasa general council since this year.

Several companies have achieved quantitative parity, but not qualitative. Needless to turn around, the issue of inequality in Italian companies exists and was recently addressed by the think tank the Marketing Lab Society.

Male dominance in top positions in organisations is the result of a combination of cultural, social and structural factors. Women often encounter more obstacles in career paths, partly due to more limited access to networking and mentoring opportunities.

Moreover, in many organisational contexts, promotion processes continue to favour men, even with equal qualifications and experience.

Stereotypes persist that men are more willing to work and less involved in family responsibilities.

At the same time, some more directive leadership models are still predominantly associated with the male gender, despite the fact that leadership styles are not intrinsically linked to gender.

In recent years, however, there has been greater recognition of approaches to leadership based on listening, mediation and relationship management, helping to broaden the models considered effective.

In this context, several organisations have introduced gender quotas as a corrective tool to facilitate women's access to top positions. Such measures have helped to reduce historical imbalances and make alternative leadership models more visible. In the absence of such interventions, change would probably be slower.

Quotas, however, should be understood as temporary tools, destined to lose relevance in truly inclusive organisational contexts.

At the same time, gender quotas can present some critical issues: they risk creating mechanisms that are perceived as compulsory and do not affect the cultural beliefs underlying inequalities.

In some cases, they can fuel suspicions that appointments are not fully meritocratic, paradoxically reinforcing gender stereotypes.

For this reason, quotas alone are not sufficient to close the gender gap.

Integrated policies such as salary transparency, women's leadership development programmes, work-life balance measures and a review of evaluation and promotion criteria are more effective.