They are now the majority in hospital wards and also in the pharmaceutical industry, the flagship of Italian manufacturing, there are more women on average than in all other industrial sectors thanks also to policies to support welfare and birth rates. track from business. If there is a crucial sector of the country also in terms of GDP where women are finally protagonists – even if not always at the top (especially hospitals and local health authorities) and sometimes with lower salaries -, it is that of Healthcare which has in the last two years, thanks also to their decisive contribution, it has withstood the impact of the Covid tsunami.
Female doctors became the majority
Female doctors under the age of 70, therefore potentially active in the National Health Service, are, albeit by a narrow margin, more than men: 169,477 against 163,515, 50.9% of the total. To certify it, the data processed as every year on the occasion of 8 March by the Study Center of the National Federation of orders of surgeons and dentists (
Fnomceo
Protagonists in the drug supply chain
Women are also protagonists in pharmaceutical companies. The numbers just released by Farmindustria: they represent 43% of the total number of employees, much more than in the other sectors (29% on average). A share that is identical between managers and cadres. In research, then, at the heart of the sector, they exceed 50%. And they are close to 50% among the under 35s, with peaks of 55% among executives and middle managers. But to help women it is necessary to promote the birth rate and corporate welfare measures. These are the themes at the center of a meeting organized by Farmindustria with the Onda Foundation on the occasion of Women’s Day to reiterate every effort to stop the demographic decline. “For years the pharmaceutical industry has created welfare models that allow people who work to reconcile life and work – underlines Massimo Scaccabarozzi, President of Farmindustria -. We have many best practices and help was guaranteed by the ‘pink’ presence in our companies, a precious resource. Women who are working, who are mothers, who are caregivers of the family. And that make a fundamental contribution to research to find increasingly effective therapies ».
We need policies to support welfare and the birth rate
«In our sector, women are 43% of the total employed. An important number. For us, equality is not just a numerical slogan, but it is something concrete: women and men have the same positions and the possibility of identical careers “, he highlighted Enrica Giorgetti, general manager of Farmindustria. Entering into the merits of the problems of the birth rate in Italy, Giorgetti recalled that “in the last 60 years in Italy we have gone from more than 1 million children born each year to less than 400 thousand and, if we count the average number of children per women and if we compare with France and Germany, our curve has dropped to a peak in the last 10 years. We are the bottom of Europe – he observed – But in our sector families have a number of children 45% higher than the national average and among pharmaceutical workers the children are one and a half times the Italian average ». These numbers are favored precisely by company policies that facilitate women because, as the general manager of Farmindustria pointed out, the data from the Labor Inspectorate show that the difficulty of reconciling life and work times causes 85% of resignations.
Differences in salaries and at the top of Asl and hospitals
The “pink” presence among the other health professionals is even more marked: according to data from Fnopi, the federation of nursing professions, 76% of nurses are women. However, significant differences still remain, starting with the contribution level. According to Almalaurea data, cited by Fnopi, female nurses earn 12.8% less than their male colleagues. The difference drops to -2.6% if, on the other hand, only full-time professionals are considered. There is still a marked difference in the presence of women at the top of Asl and hospitals where only two out of ten general managers are women. The presence of women at the top of the general management of Italian health and hospital organizations, although still very low, nevertheless records a percentage increase of 3.8% compared to last year. Fiaso (the Federation that brings together the managers of Asl and hospitals) the positive trend of growth of women managers has been gradual but continuous in the last four years, going from 14.4% in 2018 to 22%. The presence of administrative managers is more accentuated, equal to 37.9% of the total, which records an increase of 2.7% compared to 2021. The presence of women in the top positions of the health departments, on the other hand, is almost unchanged, which stands at 32, 6%. Finally, over four out of ten (44.4%) women occupy the role of social and health director.