The University Hospital of Ferrara publishes its “Gender Report 2021”, after that of the Local Health Authority was drawn up a few months ago.
This is a gender analysis of business reality, which will help planning health services, to overcome the areas of discrimination and will allow to know the relationship between health needs, the accessibility and use of health services, the socio-economic situation and the role of women of any ethnicity, culture and religion.
An extremely significant topic, on which this morning Dr. Monica Calamai, General Manager of the Local Health Authority and Extraordinary Commissioner of the University Hospital of Ferrara, gave a report as part of the “Transparency Day – Gender Equality: Communication and Transparency“, promoted by the Health Authorities of the Vasta Emilia Centro area together with the Romagna Ausl.
“Analysis and drafting of a gender budget – comments the Director General of the two Health Authorities, Dr. Monica Calamai – arises above all from the need to fulfil an operation of equity, transparency, but also of social justice and efficiency. In the absence of a legal drafting obligation, the University Hospital of Ferrara has decided to undertake a voluntary reporting process to assess the current situation and ensure equal opportunities between men and women”.
International and national data report the presence of consistent gender differences on multiple and important aspects. For example, at the European level, the “Gender Equality Index” detects a gap between men and women almost always to the detriment of the female sex, on six dimensions considered: health, power, education, time, work and income, to which are added the theme of violence and the intersection of inequalities; the exceptions are the average survival, but not the quality of life, and the achievement of the highest educational qualification, but not the use of it.
“Questioning the company’s reality is not only a professional but an ethical duty – continues Calamai -. In fact, gender inequalities represent one double discrimination as they constitute a significant loss of value – due to the lack of use of the skills and competences of a large part of the resources in the health and social fields – and add to inequalities linked to other factors (economic, social, ethnic, etc.). This Report is therefore a document that represents a snapshot of what exists, but it must also provide elements that can lead to the initiation of concrete actions both within the company and in terms of health policies. We are already working on the Unified Budget for 2022 to arrive at Gender Certification towards the necessary goal of changing the paradigm”.
TRANSPARENCY DAY. In her report, Dr. Calamai reiterated that it will take 132 years to overcome the global gender gap, as well as some significant international indicators on this issue. In terms of wages, for example, women with equal qualifications are 30 per cent lower. While 75 percent of domestic work is still done by women. The introduction of the Gender Equality Index is important for measuring the progress of gender equality, and it shows that Italy is in 14th place among the 27 EU countries. Just think, to give just one example, that among the “STEM Degrees”, those of women are only 40 percent.
The recent legislation is introducing, also in Italy, tools and incentives to limit the gender pay gap, such as for example the possibility of performing agile or remote work, ways of reconciling life and working times, the certification of equal gender, the gender manager and the drafting of the Gender Report.
THE GENDER BALANCE OF THE UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL COMPANY. Both Ferrara healthcare companies now have Gender Reports (Ausl since October 2022 and Aosp since February 2023): built with a participatory method, they contain an external view of the services provided to the companies in terms of gender, as well as data on internal services, and the internal policies of the two companies to reduce the gender pay gap.
Numerous interesting data emerge from the Gender Report of the University Hospital.
Of the 3,622 workers (data at the end of 2021), 72 percent, equal to 2,595 are women. Strategic management is made up of female professionals, which is also prevalent among management and simple structure responsibilities (about 60 per cent), but if we analyze complex structures, 67 per cent are attributed to men and moving on to the university front, it emerges that more than 59 percent of the university staff on agreement with the university are male.
This differentiation also emerges in salaries: with the same qualifications, a director of a complex structure earns around 19 thousand euros more than a female colleague. On the other hand, imbalances in favor of women exist for lower positions, but also for department heads.
The female workers of the University Hospital make more use, than men, of agile work, parental permits and the permits of law 104, with percentages of 90 and 85 per cent, proving that family care work still weighs almost exclusively on the shoulders of women.
Men are still prevalent in the composition of competition commissions and in research studies, while, on the other hand, women are more victims of episodes of violence.
The process of drafting the Gender Report has found its operational centrality in a interdisciplinary working group attended by referents of the health and social services of the University Hospital e representatives of the University of Ferraracomponents of the intercompany serviceswhich are shared between AUSL and AOU, for example the training and staffas well as representatives of the General Management staffof the Single Guarantee Committee (CUG) he was born in St. Anna’s Equity Board he was born in University Center for Studies on Gender Medicine of Ferrara.
The Ospfe Gender Report can be viewed at this link: