More female graduates but only 53% work, salaries up to 40% lower and pensions 46% lower

One year after the master's degree for most subject areas men have higher employment rates, peaking at 90.4% in STEM disciplines compared to around 85% for women. Three years later, the data do not improve for single-cycle master's degrees in which men achieve slightly higher employment rates than women in most areas. In post-graduate courses, the female gender excels in 1st and 2nd level master's degrees, reaching 66.9% and 60% of the total number of graduates. In the case of PhDs, on the other hand, the scenario is balanced; among PhD graduates 49.7% are women.

Participation in continuing education is higher among women than men (10.8% vs. 10%), as is the phenomenon of over-educated employees who have a higher qualification than required for their profession (29.4% vs. 25.4% of men)

Among employees, women represent 40.4% among permanent workers, while in fixed-term and seasonal contracts the gender distribution is more balanced (they represent 47.6% in the former case and 49.7% in the latter).

For the employment rate, the gap remains significant: in 2024 at the national level between the ages of 15 and 64, against a total employment rate for Italy of 62.2%. women will stop at 53.3% against 71.1% for men, The unemployment rate for women in the 15-74 age range is 7.3% against 5.9% for men in 2024, against a total average rate of 6.5% (again 2024 data). The inactivity rate between the ages of 15 and 64 for women is 42.4% compared to 24.4% for men, against a total rate of 33.4%.

The male gender also prevails among recruitments, despite the fact that the female population is larger: in permanent contracts the delta in favour of men is 26.6%, while in fixed-term contracts it is 12.8%; the gap of 13.8 percentage points between the two types of contract is determined by a greater presence of women employed in discontinuous activities. Part-time recruitment in 2024 shows a prevalence of women in all age groups (57% in the total), with a more marked gap in the 30-50 and 51 age groups; part-time is therefore a contractual form used to a greater extent by women, especially in the middle ages of working life.

The phenomenon of Neet among 15-29 year olds who do not study, train or work also affects women in particular: the worst figures are 27.9 per cent in Calabria and 27.4 per cent in Sicily.

NASpI - the monthly unemployment benefit for employees who involuntarily lose their jobs - is used to a greater extent by women. This prevalence suggests a higher incidence of employment interruptions or unstable employment conditions among the female component of the labour force (1.2 million women against just over 1 million men).

In permanent contracts, the gender gap is particularly marked between management and middle management positions. Only 21.8% of women occupy managerial positions, compared to 78.2% of their male colleagues. A significant disparity also emerges in the area of contracts for middle managers: women account for 33.1% of the total, while men make up the remaining 66.9%. This confirms that access to top positions and managerial responsibility in Italy continues to be predominantly the prerogative of men,

Among the sectors of activity, only in domestic work do female workers - both Italian and foreign - have much higher numbers than their male colleagues, a sign of how care work is understood to be purely female.

In the civil service the situation is different from private employment; there are more women than men. However, in the Armed Forces, Police Corps and Fire Brigade only 9.4% are women with permanent contracts. In the School and Health Service the opposite is true, with 79.2% and 69.7% female respectively.

In all economic sectors surveyed - with the exception of mining and quarrying - men earn higher average daily incomes than women. Specifically, in nine out of eighteen sectors examined, women earn more than 20% less; in financial and insurance activities women earn an average of 31.7% less, in scientific and technical professional activities 34.2% less and in real estate activities 40.2% less.

In addition to the contractual classification, other elements such as individual treatment, overtime and part-time work (which is more often involuntary among women than men at 13.7% compared to 4.6%) affect the value of average daily wages.

Average daily wages in the public sector suffer less from the gender gap even though, for the health service and universities and research institutes, men earn 19.8% more than women.

 The number of female pensioners continues to exceed that of male pensioners. Women, due to the discontinuity of their professional career, continue to find it more difficult to meet the requirements for a retirement pension than men (women account for 34.2%), with the exception of the civil servants sector where the gap is almost non-existent. In the Employees' Pension Fund, seniority/early retirement pensions paid to males are more than twice as high as those paid to females, often forcing women to wait until the age required for an old age pension. The particular incidence of women in survivor pensions is due to the different average life expectancy between the genders.

Women receive consistently lower allowances in all managements. The gap is particularly critical in old age pensions, where women workers in the private sector receive on average 46.2% less than their male colleagues, and in parasubordinate pensions, where the average total amount for women is almost half that for men. For seniority/early retirement pensions women receive more than 20% less than men