Women in business - Growth needed beyond every “rosy” expectation

One of the new things we face in 2023 is certainly having a woman as prime minister. A few months ago it was perhaps unthinkable, given the progress Italy still has to make on equal opportunities, especially at work.

By now there are quite a few cases of women at the top of institutions, political and otherwise, but in some ways, until now, we didn't think Italy was “ready”, even though of course it isn't a question of being ready or not. Giorgia Meloni is the first prime minister to lead Palazzo Chigi, and she was already the only woman at the head of a political party.

Naturally, and fortunately, the same role is shared by other women, such as Sanna Marin, the Finnish prime minister and the youngest leader in the world, or Elisabeth Borne in France and Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland. The very first in history to hold the office of prime minister was Sirimavo Bandaranaike, elected prime minister of Ceylon and Sri Lanka back in 1960. Also in Asia, Sheikh Hasina has been prime minister of Bangladesh since 2009, having already held the post from 1996 to 2001. The list could go on with the former German chancellor Angela Merkel, the US vice president Kamala Harris, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, and in finance with Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank.

A list like this might seem rhetorical, and yet, if you look at things more broadly, you realise that matters, especially at home, are not going all that well.

According to the Eurofound agency, Italy is the European country with the lowest female participation in the workforce: 54.4% (only Malta does worse), against a European average of 63.5%. The best performer is Sweden, with 77.6%. This under-employment costs our country a full 5.7% of GDP.

So how much would Italy gain with greater female participation in the workforce? Here it is: new wealth would be produced worth 11% of Gross Domestic Product. Hardly a trifle.

Let's also give a few other numbers that take a snapshot of what is happening, and that could change a picture that is still not very edifying: female entrepreneurship in Italy is highly significant in manufacturing and services: 22% of companies are run by women, and in the last five years they have accounted for 75% of all new businesses in the country. Of course, as already said, it isn't enough.

In 1999 the Japanese analyst Kathy Matsui became famous for developing the theory of Womenomics for the research division of Goldman Sachs Global Investment.

Matsui highlighted how closing the employment gap between men and women could help Japan out of stagnation (it was the period after the property bubble burst at the end of the 1980s), and argued strongly that encouraging women to take an ever greater part in the world of work could broadly improve a country's economic conditions, with a 15% increase in GDP. More than twenty years later, however, the women's question remains unresolved or at best half-solved, and certainly not only in Japan: it's the same the world over.

Clearly the difficulties encountered are still tied today to a cultural legacy firmly anchored to “values” of the past, which in effect causes this gender gap. A woman faces the choice of “career or family” (which ought to be anachronistic), because there is no structured support network around her.

It has to be said that, compared with the past, women entrepreneurs now have incentives available to start or consolidate their business, thanks in part to ministerial support, provided that, in the case of companies, women make up no less than two thirds of the board of directors or that, for sole traders, the owner is a woman.

Self-employed women with a VAT number can also access the incentives. But more and more has to be done, with constant pressure and action, if we want to grow. Today there is a lot of talk about recovery, but we have to aim higher.

In short. We have to accelerate if we want to be competitive.

Also through support measures that are ever more effective, where “support” does not mean bonuses or handouts but concrete, structural help through which the country can become ever more attractive.

In Italy, the Ministry of Economic Development set up the “Women's Enterprise Fund” for 2022, which supports the creation, development and continuation of women-led companies through grants and subsidised loans. The resources ran out very quickly and we are waiting for it to be extended.

And here is some good, in fact excellent, news. As the data processed by InfoCamere for Unioncamere's Observatory on Female Entrepreneurship shows, innovation “in pink” keeps growing.

There were 2,000 innovative start-ups registered at the end of September 2022, 572 more than in the same period of 2019.

Precisely during the Covid pandemic emergency, many women opened businesses specialising in the development, production and sale of a technological product or service. They represent 13.6% of all start-ups, a share similar to two years earlier (it was 13.5%). But their growth has been remarkable, around +40%. Which sectors are most involved? Over 70% of these two thousand businesses work in business services; just over 15% in manufacturing, and 4.6% in retail. There are four most innovative regions, where more than 50% of all companies of this kind are concentrated: Lombardy (470), Lazio (263), Campania (204), Emilia Romagna (143). In absolute terms, the largest net increases were recorded in Lombardy, Lazio, Campania and Tuscany.

More generally, there are over 1,342,000 women-led companies in Italy. Among the sectors most involved are Other service activities (over half), Health and social care (37.21%), Education (30.92%), Accommodation and food services (29.21%), agriculture (28.13%) and Rental, travel agencies and business services (26.54%).

May it serve as a good resolution, today more than ever.

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