It’s been discussed for decades, yet the topic is more relevant than ever: women in the workplace still start a step behind. This isn’t just a feeling — it’s a fact confirmed by the numbers year after year. But alongside the disparities, there are also concrete strategies, both personal and corporate, that can genuinely change things. Let’s take stock.

The disparities women know all too well

In Italy, the female employment rate stands at around 52%, compared to a European average of 65%. This huge gap is partly explained by another figure: nearly 50% of women working part-time do so not by choice but out of necessity, often because they can’t find alternatives that let them balance a job with caring for children or family members. Women make up 30% of part-time workers, compared to just 7% of men.

On pay, official statistics put Italy’s gender pay gap at around 5-6%, but that figure tells only part of the story: looking at the “gender overall earnings gap” — which also accounts for hours worked, part-time status, and career interruptions — the real gap in earnings between men and women is close to 40%. The differences are concentrated mainly in variable pay components (bonuses, extra allowances, career progression), precisely the areas women have less access to, since they less frequently reach senior roles.

The consequences carry through to retirement: in 2024, the gender pension gap in Italy was 28.6%, higher than the EU average of 24.5%. Globally, the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report confirms that parity in senior roles remains distant, with a women-to-men ratio not exceeding 0.4, and that “economic participation and opportunity” is the dimension closing most slowly compared to all others.

Something is moving, though: starting in 2026, Italy is transposing the EU directive on pay transparency, which will require companies to state salary ranges in job postings — one more tool to make hidden disparities visible, and therefore challengeable.

Why it’s still happening

The causes are both structural and cultural. The burden of family care, more so in Italy than elsewhere, still falls mainly on women: from young children to elderly parents, alongside the daily running of the household. This invisible “mental load” piles on top of paid working hours and is rarely recognized as work in its own right. On top of that, a bias still widespread in corporate settings perceives motherhood as an organizational cost or risk, penalizing women during hiring or promotion regardless of their actual intentions or abilities.

Tried-and-tested tricks and strategies for balancing work and family

There’s no magic formula, but there are habits that many women — myself included — have learned to cultivate to carry the double load without burning out.

First: plan well ahead. A shared family calendar, where work commitments, school events, and medical appointments all sit in one place, avoids last-minute chaos and is probably the simplest, most effective tool there is.

Second: learn to delegate, both at the office and at home. Delegating isn’t a failure — it’s smart resource management: asking your partner for help, sharing household tasks in a genuinely equal way, and relying on a support network (grandparents, babysitters, other mothers) whenever possible.

Third: build clear boundaries between work and personal life. Set availability hours, communicate them transparently to colleagues, and above all, respect them yourself first: if the workday ends at 6pm, the work phone can wait until the next morning.

Fourth: negotiate flexibility, don’t just accept whatever comes. Remote work, flexible hours, or time-banking should be requested explicitly, explaining how they translate into higher productivity and lower stress — framed not as a favor, but as an arrangement that benefits both sides.

Fifth: don’t give up time for yourself. Even just twenty minutes a day devoted to something restorative — a walk, reading, a quiet moment — makes a real difference in your ability to keep up with the pace of the week.

Finally: build a network of allies. Talking with other women facing the same challenges helps normalize the difficulties, exchange practical advice, and feel less alone along the way.

What employers can do: welfare and benefits that make a difference

Individual strategies aren’t enough if the workplace doesn’t support them. This is where the employer’s role becomes decisive — especially since Italy now has concrete regulatory tools and incentives for companies that invest in this direction.

A first step is gender equality certification, introduced under Italian law: certified companies get a social security contribution reduction of up to 1% (capped at €50,000 per year), in exchange for adopting structured policies on flexibility, support for maternity and paternity, caregiving, organizational wellbeing, and career development.

On the practical side, the most effective benefits remain: childcare welfare, through corporate or partner nurseries and dedicated bonuses (in some cases up to €3,600 per year per child); structured remote work, no longer automatically guaranteed by law but increasingly the subject of flexible individual agreements with parents; shared parental leave, with financial incentives for couples who split time at home in a balanced way — an important lever for normalizing active fatherhood too; reversible part-time arrangements, allowing reduced hours during periods of heavier family demands without compromising long-term career progression; welfare plans covering school expenses, including tuition, books, summer camps, and study tools; and structured return-to-work programs after maternity leave, with mentoring and skills updates, so the break doesn’t turn into a career setback.

Starting in 2026, mandatory maternity leave in Italy is also increasing from 5 to 7 months, with the option to split it for a more gradual return to work — a change that the most forward-thinking companies are already building into their welfare plans, going beyond the legal minimum.

A balance that’s possible, if built together

The disparities women face in the workplace won’t be solved by a single organizational trick or by individual goodwill alone. It takes a cultural shift — one that runs through each of our daily choices, but also through concrete company policies. The good news is that the tools exist today: it’s up to us to know them, ask for them, and, whenever we can, help build them.

Sources: data on the gender pay gap and female employment in Italy (Vertenza Lavoro, WeWorld, Manageritalia); Global Gender Gap Report, World Economic Forum; regulations on gender equality certification and family welfare (UNI/PdR 192:2026, Italian Government – Family Department).