Highly qualified, technical professions in the STEM field. Flexibility of time and place of work. These are the “traits” that are increasingly taking shape in the identity cards of Italian female workers who, despite the considerable progress recorded in recent decades, continue to be employed to a lesser extent than men (51.4% against 69.5% %), with lower salaries and with a lower frequency of management positions.
According to the Global gender gap index 2022, Italy ranks 63rd in the world and 14th in Europe for gender equality, with a lower score in the Gender equality index of the Eige (European institute for gender equality) to the European average, which sees Iceland, Finland and Norway at the top of the ranking.
But something is moving. According to the predictive study conducted by the consulting firm EY with ManpowerGroup and Sànoma Italia within the Observatory “The Future of Skills” there is a strong polarization of the demand for work, in which the dichotomy between expected growing professions is amplified ( 54% against 37.5% in 2021) and those that are estimated to be decreasing (26% against 47.75% in the previous year).
In this scenario, in the medium term, the greatest job opportunities will be concentrated in high-skilled professions, to the detriment of medium and low-skilled ones, reversing the trend that wanted, in Italy, a more marked increase in manual jobs .
Among the professions whose demand is expected to grow, there are not only profiles with purely technical and technological skills, but also figures capable of understanding and explaining technology and its use, aimed, for example, at the transmission of knowledge and teaching, producing content, and using technology for collaboration and experience design.