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#3 - Reducing Italy's pay gap by 7% by 2026
We've pulled this—one of our early episodes—from the archives as a backgrounder on Italy's gender equality strategy, equal pay law, and voluntary certification. Enjoy!
Italy, the country with the lowest participation of women in the labor market is finally making progress. In 2021, then-Prime Minister Draghi set ambitious goals for pay equity: The administration aimed to drive down the unadjusted pay gap from 17% to 10% by 2026. But how is Italy going to do it? And how will these changes impact employers?
The measures underscoring these gender equality goals are, too, ambitious: They aim to drive up the percentage of companies run by women from 22% to 30% over those five years. Alongside this, they are encouraging women to develop IT-oriented skills and have placed restrictions on whom you can hire with European funds to increase the hiring of young women.
In 2022, Italy made major changes to speed the rate of progress: They signed a new equal pay law consistent with the National Strategy for gender equality for the years 2021-2026, which includes mandatory reporting. Alongside this, Italy launched a voluntary Equal Pay Certification to promote greater gender equality in the workplace. Its designers hope that it will result in more women in the workforce (including upper management), improve work-life balance, and decrease workplace stereotyping, discrimination, and abuse.