Gender pay gap in the metalworking sector: women earn up to 19.2 per cent less overall, with a record gap between manual workers and managers

The greatest gender pay gaps in terms of average gross annual pay are found in companies with between 101 and 250 employees, with a pay gap of -31.50 per cent, and are high across all size categories, whilst the lowest figures are recorded in companies with over 500 employees (-18.94%), which is still above the average, and in the category of over 1,000 employees, where the gap stands at –8.42 per cent – a figure that is, however, higher than in 2022–2023, when it stood at –6.4 per cent.

According to the survey carried out by Fim Cisl, the metalworking sector is seeing a decline in the proportion of women: they account for 19.6 per cent of the workforce in the sample surveyed, compared with 20.6 per cent in the previous two-year period. As in the two previous two-year periods, the highest proportion of women in this two-year period is found in the white-collar category, accounting for 27.99 per cent of all white-collar workers (who make up 39.28 per cent of the sector’s workforce), despite a decline in white-collar work and in the proportion of women in white-collar roles compared with the 2022–2023 period, when women accounted for 29.56 per cent of all white-collar workers (a category which made up 41.51 per cent of total employment).

Over this two-year period, too, the proportion of women amongst manual workers (who account for 49.68 per cent of the total workforce) remains very low: female manual workers make up 12.14 per cent (compared with 13 per cent in the previous two-year period). Conversely, the proportion of women in senior management roles has risen for the third consecutive two-year period, increasing by 5.36% among female managers: women account for 19.67% of all managers, although this group makes up only 2% of total employment in the sector. The proportion of women among middle managers has risen by 2.63 per cent, where they account for 22.42 per cent (representing 9 per cent of the sector’s workforce). The majority of female senior managers, as well as middle managers, are employed in companies with more than 1,000 employees.

The most common type of contract in the metalworking sector is the permanent contract, accounting for 96.91 per cent of the total workforce. Women, too, are predominantly employed on permanent contracts, accounting for 97.70 per cent of the total.

Fixed-term contracts account for 3.09 per cent of the total, and the proportion among female employees is even lower, at 2.30 per cent; these figures are in line with those for the two previous two-year periods.

The take-up of part-time work, which is relatively low in the metalworking sector – standing at around 3.28 per cent over the past two years – is higher amongst women, at 12.72 per cent. This confirms that, for family reasons, women are often forced to work part-time in order to manage care responsibilities. The latest Istat Report 2026 highlights that women carry out, on average, 5 hours of domestic work per day, taking on 68.6 per cent of household tasks; these figures also reveal one of the widest gender gaps in Europe regarding the division of household tasks between men and women.

Company-level collective bargaining, once again during this two-year period, remains the preserve of medium-sized and large companies and is struggling to gain a foothold and become established in smaller organisations, where there is also, in all likelihood, a smaller number of trade union representatives (RSUs).

Of the 1,104 companies covered by the Fim survey, 928 – employing a total of 314,258 workers (of whom 60,230 are women) – apply the Federmeccanica-Assistal National Collective Labour Agreement. Of these, 370 companies (39.87 per cent), which employ the majority of workers (244,797, of whom 45,603 are women) – that is, 77.90 per cent of the total – state that they have second-level collective bargaining at company level, as do the companies applying the Stellantis, Ivceco, Ferrari and CNHI sector-wide collective agreements, which employ 54,255 workers (of whom 10,693 are women). The other collective agreements in the metalworking sector represent a smaller cross-section of the workforce, and in all cases there is a clear prevalence of the absence of company-level collective bargaining.

Among the sample of companies covered by the survey, 999 provide welfare benefits, covering the majority of workers (374,201, of whom 73,617 are women). Of these companies, 619 state that they have no second-level collective bargaining agreements, either at company or regional level; as in the previous two-year period, they therefore provide welfare benefits based exclusively on national collective agreements.

There are 373 companies that have welfare schemes as part of their company-level collective bargaining agreements; the most common remains flexible working hours, which apply to 92.16 per cent of the workforce, whilst 77.20 per cent make use of remote working and 65.8 per cent take advantage of additional leave and time off. For the third consecutive two-year period, quality of time and work-life balance have been the most sought-after provisions and the most commonly included in collective agreements.

Remote working is utilised by 21.89 per cent of the workforce, and women account for 34.68 per cent of those using this arrangement – a figure which highlights that, whilst this arrangement is used equally across genders, it is nevertheless preferred by women.As women bear the greater share of family responsibilities, working remotely can allow for more flexible time management, reduce commuting and improve the work-life balance. The use of remote working appears to be more prevalent in medium-sized and large organisations, whilst it struggles to take hold in smaller ones, where activities may be more production-oriented and manual, and consequently difficult to manage remotely.

 The uptake of the right to vocational training is falling amongst male and female workers, whilst the number of companies failing to fulfil this obligation is rising (in the sample, the figure has risen from 13.82% to 14.49%). Of the 1,104 companies surveyed, 944 (85.51 per cent) report carrying out training activities involving 281,654 workers, of whom 55,119 are women. The total number of training hours per capita is 23.51; 24.63 for men and 19.92 for women.

Compared with the previous two-year period, the proportion of workers undergoing training has fallen from 78.47 per cent to 72.66 per cent in the current two-year period. 14.49% of the sample – equivalent to 160 companies – reported that they had not carried out any training activities; consequently, 20,983 employees were unable to exercise their right to training, a figure which, moreover, has risen compared with the previous two-year period.