NEWS

Pubblicità Progresso continues, for the second year, its commitment to gender equality with the Punto su di te campaign and the dedicated website www.puntosudite.it.

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, it launches the hashtag #womaninjob to share an in-depth look at the main objectives to be achieved to reach gender equality: work-life balance and equal pay.

As Alberto Contri, President of the Pubblicità Progresso Foundation, points out, #womaninjob was chosen to emphasize that the theme that unites these two major issues is precisely work: the work that women and men do as employees/managers in the workplace and the care of their families that, especially women, do every day but which, often, is not considered as such or is undervalued.

When talking about gender discrimination, depending on the work environment, many problems are still encountered but solutions are also found. According to a recent survey by the Diversity Management Lab (Diversity Management Observatory of Bocconi University in Milan): only 27% of the companies interviewed, all with over 250 employees, implement diversity management policies in the company.

Here is the opinion of some women, engaged in different professions, who have told us about their personal experience:

Claudia Gerini, actress: A tolerated, well-known, and never admitted truth: in the world of cinema, women, for the same role, are paid less than men. Producers must be the first to commit to giving everyone a real equal opportunity. Undoubtedly, the work of an actor makes it very difficult to organize the work-life balance. The effort to find a work-life balance is, in fact, a fundamental task of the couple whose objective is mutual respect and the priority of educating children. In this context, the presence of grandparents is very useful when possible as an excellent complement to family education. Read the full interview.

Federica Di Stolfo, show business manager: I worked three times harder than a male manager because, to be accepted, I had to prove every day that I knew how to work well, even better than a man. I’ll tell you an anecdote that speaks volumes and that makes me smile today: a man, moreover the mayor of a small town, said to me: “I would like to speak to the artist’s manager” I replied: “Please, you can tell me” and he replied: “No, I want to talk to the male manager!” Read the full interview.

Il tema della Parità di Genere è molto sentito nel mondo dello spettacolo, come hanno dimostrato anche gli Oscar 2015.Nella notte più chiacchierata dell’anno, infatti, si è dato largo spazio alla questione femminile: a partire dall’ormai celebre discorso di ringraziamento di Patricia Arquette, premiata miglior attrice non protagonista, che ha dedicato la statuetta anche «A tutte le donne che hanno partorito e a tutte le cittadine di questa nazione».Nella stessa notte, anche Reese Whiterspoon ha condotto un momento della sua battaglia per la parità di genere, affermando “Noi siamo più del nostro vestito” e lanciando un movimento all’insegna dell’hashtag #Chiediledipiù.Impossibile infine non citare l’esplosione sui social della campagna #SpeakBeautiful realizzata da Dove in collaborazione con Twitter, per incitare le donne a cambiare il proprio modo di pensare scrivendo tweet positivi sulle altre donne.

E proprio dal mondo dei social arriva la nostra terza testimonianza:

Laura Bononcini, Head of policy Facebook Italia: A fundamental aspect for realizing Facebook’s mission is that of diversity: to contribute to a world that is increasingly open and connected it is necessary to have a team capable of understanding and reflecting different communities, backgrounds, cultures, experiences and ways of thinking and that is why Facebook seeks candidates in communities traditionally underrepresented in the tech sector. At Facebook, when we talk about diversity, we mean cognitive diversity, of thought and experience, as well as culture, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, abilities/knowledge, socio-economic status and other factors. Read the full interview.

Read the full interview.
Work-life balance and equal pay are therefore the real objectives of gender equality. For the full achievement of gender equality, the protection and reconciliation of family care needs and the development of a professional career represent, in fact, one of the main levers to try to achieve three results simultaneously:
improve the labor market and female participation;
strengthen family budgets and, last but not least,
reverse the negative trend of births in our country. Source: Valore D, Work-family balance

Secondo una indagine Istat, infatti, quattro donne su 10 interrompono il lavoro per prendersi cura dei figli. Inoltre 2 milioni e 754 mila padri occupati e 1 milione e 18 mila madri occupate non usufruiscono del congedo parentale. La mancanza di servizi di supporto nelle attività di cura rappresenta un ostacolo per il lavoro a tempo pieno di 204 mila donne occupate part time (il 14,3%) e per l’ingresso nel mercato del lavoro di 489 mila donne non occupate (l’11,6%).

It is precisely on the issue of work-life balance that the fourth testimony comes from the world of Public Relations.

Rossella Sobrero, Pubblicità Progresso Councilor: Almost all women, when they become mothers, know how complicated it is to balance their time, and when they don’t have the help of their parents the problem becomes even more serious. Today, some companies are integrating the insufficient services of the public system with initiatives often managed in collaboration with social cooperatives. Promoting work-life balance means creating integrated networks, even if for those working in small companies the problem is more difficult to solve. Read the full interview.

You can watch some social and commercial campaigns from the Pubblicità Progresso International Media Library that deal with the issue of work-life balance.

The second major goal to be achieved is equal pay.

If equality is to be sought in the wallet, then many more March 8ths must pass before the goal is reached. Despite being enshrined in countless treaties, the gender pay gap continues to be a current issue, so much so that the European Commission in 2014 set the Day for Equal Pay for the second consecutive year on the last day of February “because it is as if women worked for free for the first two months of the year”.

For every thousand euros earned by an Italian man, women have to settle for 550. These are average values, calculated for all citizens, taking into account a crucial but often overlooked fact: the many women in Italy who do not work. If this distortion is removed, then the pay gap also rises to 45%, as certified by Eurostat. Only in this way is it possible to measure the real autonomy of women and their bargaining power in the family and to avoid being consoled by the contained value of the Italian pay gap. Source: La 27ora, Men and women divided by 450 euros

In the rest of Europe, however, things are no better. Christine Lagarde, director of the International Monetary Fund, said in an interview: “In too many countries, legal restrictions prevent women from being economically active. In a world seeking growth, women could help find it if there were equal conditions.” You can watch some social and commercial campaigns from the Pubblicità Progresso International Media Library that address the issue of equal pay.

Finally, we propose a selection from the Pubblicità Progresso International Media Library, some commercial campaigns that, with irony, have tried to stigmatize how, sometimes, men look at women, by reversing the roles.