PRESS RELEASE
Presentation of the Plus Report
Inapp, Employment: 1 in 5 women out of the labour market after giving birth. A third of them are either dismissed or their contract is not renewed.
Fadda: “Women’s path to full and stable employment is often a real obstacle race. We often talk about a brain drain, but there is another form of human capital dispersion, which is related to the failure to support and enhance women’s employment. Ad-hoc measures are not enough, we need to properly calibrate all policies to prevent gender effects – which are sometimes more obvious than others – to avoid penalising women’s participation in the labour market.”
Rome, March 7, 2023 – After the birth of a child, nearly 1 in 5 women (18%) between the ages of 18 and 49 no longer work and only 43.6% remain employed (29% in the South and Islands).
The main factor is the imbalance between work and care (52%), followed by non-renewal of contract or dismissal (29%) and considerations around opportunities and economic advantage (19%).
The share of those who were not working either before or after motherhood stands at 31.8 percent and only 6.6 percent found work after the birth of their child.
These are the findings of the “Plus 2022 Report. Understanding the Complexity of Work,” which collects the results of the Inapp-Plus survey, conducted on a sample of 45,000 individuals aged 18 to 74 and was presented at a conference in Rome today on the eve of Women’s Day.
“This is a phenomenon that has heavy demographic and economic effects,” noted Prof. Sebastiano Fadda, president of Inapp. “Italy is the last country for fertility rates in Europe, and in 2022 we hit the historical minimum of 400,000 new births. Unfortunately, motherhood continues to be a structural cause for low numbers of female participation in the workforce.
The country,” Fadda continued, “can no longer endure the ‘brain drain’ but also this other form of human capital dispersion linked to the failure to enhance and support female employment.
Family conditions, welfare services and education weigh on the decline in female participation after motherhood.
In single-parent households, the exit rates from employment after motherhood are higher: 23 percent versus 18 percent among couples. On the other hand, coupled women tend to stay unemployed after giving birth: 32 percent versus 20 percent among single parents.
The issue of the low availability, accessibility and affordability of daycare centres remains. “The scarcity of early childhood services,” reads the Report, “is confirmed by the percentage of employed parents who say they have not sent their children between the ages of 0 and 36 months to daycare (56 percent). Among those who do send their children to daycare, just under half (48 percent) used public services while a share of 40 percent used a private daycare centre. Notably, the higher the income, the higher the use of private daycare services.” For families who cannot take on all childcare commitments, grandparents seem to be the most widely used venue (58 percent). This is a cost-effective and generally flexible option. The main resource of “welfare-do-it-yourself” is mostly used in the South (63%).
Education levels protect against job loss, to a certain extent. The most educated remain in the labour market (65 percent of female university graduates), but more than 16 percent stop working (both female university graduates and high school graduates) compared to 21 percent of mothers with a middle school diploma.
To balance work and childcare, about a quarter of respondents consider more flexible working hours to be essential, while 10 percent indicate the possibility of teleworking or working from home. Part-time is more frequently indicated by women (12.4 percent compared to 7.9 percent of men) as a favourable option. This last figure, combined with the use of parental leave (68.6 percent for women vs. 26.9 percent of men), reaffirms a family model that relegates women to the role of main caregiver, with obvious employment and salary repercussions in both the short and long term.
“Women’s path to full and stable employment is often a real obstacle race,” Fadda pointed out, “and this is despite the fact that among female workers the number of university and high school graduates is higher than among men. A gap also still exists in the characteristics and ease of access of leadership positions. Women in top roles only manage one person against seven for men. Structural change cannot be guaranteed via ad-hoc measures but requires organic convergence of all policies (from tax policies to welfare systems, from working hours to family policies) to support the desire to build a family and raise children, while also ensuring gender equality in all aspects of social and professional life, and even retirement”
For more information:
Giancarlo Salemi – INAPP President Spokesperson (347 6312823)
Allegati
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