Labour market: double discrimination of women with migrant backgrounds

Statistics from the European Institute for Gender Equality EIGE place Italy in thirteenth place among European countries with 68.2 out of 100 points on the Gender Equality Index for the period 2021-2022. The Italian score is below the European average and the main area in which gender discrimination is found is in the workplace.

The analyses conducted by the ISMU Foundation on Eurostat data from 2022, as reported in the Twenty-ninth Migration Report 2023, regarding participation in the Italian labour market and unemployment by citizenship and gender, indicate a significant disadvantage for women with non-Italian and non-EU citizenship.

For the Italian population, the unemployment rate is 7.6 per cent, with 6.8 per cent for men and 8.7 per cent for women. Meanwhile, for the population from outside the EU, it is 12.0 per cent, with 9.6 per cent for men and 15.2 per cent for women. It is evident, the researchers emphasize, that there is a gender inequality with respect to presence in the labour market, to which are added the obstacles and discrimination that foreign women face. These obstacles are linked to a strong and well-known segregation of the world of work, where women with a migrant background are massively present in the personal care sector, but also to a set of prejudices they have to face in the recruitment phase.