MESTRE (ITALPRESS) – Although Italy has the lowest female employment rate in Europe, it presents in absolute terms the highest number of self-employed women.In 2023, Italian women holding VAT numbers working as artisans, traders, shopkeepers or freelancers amount to 1,610,000, compared with 1,433,100 in France and 1,294,100 employed as self-employed in Germany. This is reported by the Cgia Studies Office.The absolute supremacy of women entrepreneurs takes on even more significance when one considers that Italy’s female population of working age, between the ages of 20 and 64, consists of 17,274,250 people; in contrast, France has a surplus of 1.9 million women over that figure, and Germany even exceeds our figure by as much as 7.3 million. About 56 percent of women entrepreneurs working in our country are employed in the personal and business services sector. In addition, just under 20 percent work in commerce, while just over 10 percent are active in Horeca and about another 6 percent in industry, the same percentage is also found in agriculture. The low female employment rate in Italy is mainly attributable to the high burden of domestic work on women’s shoulders. Unfortunately, our country has historically invested to a limited extent in the development of early childhood and social services, penalizing women twofold. In the absence of adequate investment in these areas, no new jobs have been created that could have been filled predominantly by women. Numerous studies at the international level show how female entrepreneurship can be a key to increasing female employment; in fact, women who do business tend to employ other women to a significantly greater extent than their male counterparts. The specialized literature points to at least two factors that motivate women to pursue entrepreneurship.The first is structural and is related to socioeconomic status: situations of unemployment, family traditions or the presence of economic incentives lead to considering entrepreneurship as a necessity. The second factor is motivational and concerns intrinsic reasons for women to embrace such an opportunity; this aspect seems to reflect more female sensibilities. Through self-entrepreneurship, women can more flexibly manage work commitments along with family commitments. In addition, those who are inactive due to the birth of a child face significant difficulties in re-entering the labor market. Self-employment has established itself as one of the most effective tools for regaining prominence in one’s professional life and realizing one’s goals and aspirations in the hope of obtaining gratifying economic results and greater independence.It is the southern provinces that record the highest percentage incidence of women-led businesses out of the total number of businesses present in each of the 105 territorial realities monitored by the Cgia’s Studies Office. Leading the national ranking is Cagliari with 40.5 percent of the activities led by women out of the provincial total (in absolute value there are 13,340). It is followed by Benevento with 30.5 percent (9,227), Avellino with 30.2 percent (11,149), Nuoro with 29.3 percent (6,743) and Chieti with 28.9 percent (11,009). The first northern province is La Spezia, which ranks 18th nationally with an incidence of 26.4 percent (4,582). If, on the other hand, we reformulate the national ranking based on the absolute number of women’s businesses, at the top we see the Metropolitan City of Rome with 76,519 “pink” businesses (equal to 22.7 percent of the total number of businesses present at the provincial level). This is followed by Milan with 57,341 (17.9 percent), Naples with 55,904 (21.7 percent), Turin with 44,051 (22.4 percent) and Bari with 27,975 (28.9 percent).(ITALPRESS).-Photo: Agenzia Fotogramma-
