Female employment after Covid is recovering but has not eliminated the strong territorial differences between the North-Centre on one side, the South and the Islands on the other. Nor the polarization of female jobs on “traditional” sectors: women continue to be, mainly, teachers, doctors and health workers, office workers, shop assistants.
Istat data for the first nine months of 2022 reveal that after the loss of 376 thousand female jobs in 2020 due to the pandemic, the number of women at work has returned to pre-crisis levels. Indeed, if we extend our gaze to the provisional data for January 2023 just released by Istat, there are 9.87 million employed women, therefore more than those employed in 2019 (9.7 million).
The average female employment rate (again with reference to the first nine months of 2022) is 50.8%: one in two women works. While it reaches 51.9% based on provisional data for January.
North-South disparity
However, the Northern and Central Regions are all above this level, with the peak of excellence in Trentino Alto Adige (66.3%), and an average rate of around 60% in Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Lombardy (see the map on the page). On the other hand, the southern regions and the islands are placed below the average, with the black jersey of Sicily (30.3%) and Campania (30.4%).
Beyond the share of irregular work present in all Regions and therefore not recorded by the statistics, there is certainly a snapshot of an Italy with very distant territorial scenarios.