From healthcare to pensions, here are the gaps holding back women's opportunities

Five billion euro, 0.47% of total commitments net of personnel expenses, earmarked for reducing inequalities, is just one piece of the puzzle, certainly the most conspicuous one. The Budget for Gender 2024 of the General Accounting Office of the Mef, presented on 27 May by the undersecretary Lucia Albano in the Budget Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, starts from the reclassification of public accounts and returns a much broader picture: work, income, health, pensions, family care, education. A map of the gaps between men and women that continue to hold back the latter and that, in many cases, add up throughout life in a sort of alternative curriculum made up of obstacles and greater burdens.

The budget figure remains the starting point. In 2024, expenditure directly aimed at reducing gender inequality stopped at 5.02 billion, or 0.47% of total commitments classified net of personnel. They were 4.31 billion in 2023 and, according to the trajectory indicated by Albano, will rise to 5.39 billion in 2025 and 6.41 billion in 2026. The expected jump between 2025 and 2026, amounting to about one billion, comes largely from the 2026 mothers' bonus. The financial measure, however, must be read together with the rest of the dossier. Because the gender budget, Albano recalled, serves to measure the 'different impact' of revenue and expenditure decisions on men and women. And it is precisely here that the crux of the matter emerges: policies explicitly oriented towards equality are growing, but remain a residual share. The bulk of the budget continues to lie elsewhere: 784.7 billion in expenditure classified as neutral, 175.9 billion in gender-sensitive expenditure and 98.3 billion whose effects have yet to be assessed.

The first area where the gaps bite is in employment. The female employment rate in 2024, the Budget tells us, reaches 53.3 per cent, above pre-Covid levels. In 2025, Albano indicated, it rises again to 53.8 per cent. It remains, however, far from the European average, at 66.2 per cent in 2024 and 66.6 per cent in 2025. Italy's gap between male and female employment is 17.8 points in 2024. It is here that the weight of motherhood can be seen: the ratio between the employment rate of women aged between 25 and 49, with at least one child of pre-school age, and that of women without children is 75.4%, a slight improvement, but still indicative of a net penalisation. The figure is part of the chapter on reconciliation: 'Pay for the months of parental leave has been increased from 30 per cent to 80 per cent' and the outcome of the increase introduced in the first three budget laws of the Meloni government 'has been a more pronounced use of the tool,' Albano said.

Among the most obscure phenomena is that of part-time work. In 2024 the share is decreasing: 46.1 per cent of part-time female workers are, however, in this condition without having chosen it. This weighs on wages, career progression and, later on, retirement. Little has also changed on the business side: in 2024, female businesses account for 22.2% of the total, with a prevalent presence in services. Recourse to the SME Guarantee Fund is growing by just 0.1 per cent, while female entrepreneurs and professionals receive financing of around 2.39 billion.

Even a reading of Irpef declarations offers a less than comforting cross-section to measure the income gap between men and women. "In the 2023 tax year, out of more than 42.5 million taxpayers, 47.7 per cent are women, a stable share since 2019, but the total income declared by them represents only 38.5 per cent," the dossier says. This figure "signals a persistent pay gap between men and women, which is also reflected in the lower net tax paid by women, due to the progressivity of the tax system".