Motherhood slows down female leadership

Three hundred and thirty thousand. That's how many women company directors under 49 in Italian companies, according to InfoCamere's 2026 data. 33.7% out of the total number of female directors in Italia and 28% out of the total number of directors in the same age bracket. This is the figure that, more than any other, demonstrates the presence of a double disparity: gender and age.

The under-49 age group typically represents the fertile age for women and often coincides with motherhood. This is a phase of life that generates slowdowns, interruptions or in some cases exit from the world of work. But only for women. Men, in fact, by becoming fathers, experience an increase in career and income, so much so as to speak of a real 'paternity premium' (as opposed to the 'motherhood penalty'). A recognition that, as demonstrated by the Nobel Prize winner for economics, Claudia Goldin, increases with age, especially among university graduates, and that directly affects the pay gap between mothers and fathers.

Comparing the values over the last decade, it can be seen that the total number of women under 49 holding administrative positions in companies has decreased by 24%, from 434,815 in 2017 to 330,111 in 2026. But the percentage incidence of female presence remains stable. The data collected by InfoCamere is also confirmed by the Istat 2025 Survey on employment, which shows that female self-employment (i.e.: entrepreneurs, self-employed, freelance professionals) grows as age increases: from 301 thousand self-employed women between the ages of 15 and 34 years old, it goes up to 650 thousand between the ages of 50 and 64.

"The data from the Business Registry show how female leadership under 49 is a structural component of our system: despite a physiological numerical contraction, we note a resilience in the share of female administrators in strategic sectors such as education and services, showing a resilience that defies stereotypes," comments Paolo Ghezzi, InfoCamere's director general.

Women, in fact, lead companies mainly in female-dominated sectors, such as education and training (45%), but also accommodation and catering (32%), while feminisation plummets in construction 16% and energy 17%. At a territorial level, the regions where the percentage of female administrators under 49 is highest are Sardinia (31%) and Sicily (30%), demonstrating, according to InfoCamere, the greater propensity of young women to self-employment in those areas of the country where total and female unemployment is highest. "These data," adds Ghezzi, "serve to overcome prejudices with a granular information base that makes it possible to see where barriers persist on which to intervene. The quality of data is an antidote to myopic decision-making, on which to build policies based on evidence and not perception'.