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Education for Gender Equity: What Implications for Businesses?
To bridge the gender gap, an educational degree plays a pivotal role, as it ensures the economic (and emotional) independence of women. Recent studies highlight that not only do those with a university degree earn more, but education also acts as an empowering factor for motherhood and a valuable tool against violence. However, access to education remains a privilege for a minority of women. To truly be inclusive, businesses should broaden their perspective and implement programs aimed not only at advancing the careers of women who are likely the few already holding degrees. In a country like ...
Companies and Inclusion: You Can Call It "Illusion"
According to the data from The Future of Jobs Report 2023 by the World Economic Forum, most of the companies surveyed have implemented diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. While from one standpoint, data like these are reassuring, on the other hand, they do not reveal anything about the effectiveness of the measures taken, nor about the climate and employees' experiences in the workplace One of the latest surveys published by the World Economic Forum - The Future of Jobs Report 2023[1] - presents an interesting and seemingly reassuring finding. A significant portion of the companies surveyed ...
Pride Made in Italy
The Pride parades - 53 of them this year, in as many Italian cities - are always important, especially when those who should protect, enhance, and expand the rights of the LGBTQI+ community launch a campaign to restore oppressive models. While these diverse parades seem to unite the most advanced and progressive part of society and politics, we must be cautious of utilitarian exploitation. The issue of rights should not be viewed through the lenses of money and convenience, but through those of ethics and justice. The period that goes from May to June - with some extensions until September ...
Gender Gap: The Role of Financial Education
In an increasingly complex world where governments have transferred the responsibility of savings to citizens, financial literacy can heavily impact the fate and independence of an individual. Unfortunately, international data, data from Italy as well, still shows a significant gap in skills between men and women. This is a legacy of a past that continues to influence the family educational context and the sociocultural environment. Financial education aims to provide useful tools for understanding the functioning of "money" in order to make informed and conscious decisions regarding one's ...
Social Class and Organizations: A Strange Combination?
It's useless to deny it: being rich or poor matters in the workplace as well. When an individual enters a company's door, they bring along their entire history, including their social position. Based on the policies they adopt and the organizational climate they build day by day, organizations can either dilute or amplify these differences, which intersect with other aspects of identity, increasing or diminishing the potential stigma that weighs on the individual. The new issue of Economia & Management dedicated to the theme of poverty has recently been published.[1] The current geopolitical ...
Work, Private Life, and Parenthood: A Paradigm Shift is Urgently Needed
Beyond the formal declarations of companies and the gradual spread of more agile models, the problems related to the conflict between work and private life remain numerous. Just as numerous changes are necessary to address the issue adequately. While some changes concern companies (reduction of workload, increase in workforce, adoption of flexible space-time solutions), others concern individuals and society. Above all, there is a need to no longer perceive women solely as mothers or solely responsible for all caregiving activities for others. Kramer vs. Kramer, a film from 1979 based on the ...
Short Workweek and Smart Work: Let's Listen to Workers
In the current debate on the short workweek, some crucial aspects for its effective implementation are not being addressed, except in a residual way. The main risk is that of a lack of integration with smart work, resulting in a return to a traditional model where space and time - and not results - are the reference units of measurement. To choose which model to adopt (short workweek in its different variants, smart work or a mix of the two), it will be necessary to listen to workers on a case-by-case basis, in order to build a project that meets their actual needs in a specific company. There ...
Short Workweek: Work Less and in More Inclusive Contexts
The first experiments with the four-day work week have yielded positive results in terms of productivity, revenue, and satisfaction. However, beyond the difficulties of implementing this proposal on a larger scale, there are still some factors to consider. It will be important to address the issue as a whole to truly allow people to recover time for themselves and achieve a better balance between work and private life, while also creating open and inclusive work environments. In recent months, there has been a debate on the topic of the "short work week," which involves working four days a ...
Political Orientation and Regional Differences: Expanding the Viewpoint, Dialoging with the Context
Two recent episodes remind us that the causes of discrimination are not limited to the categories we concentrate the most on in today’s debate. The approach to diversity management, therefore, must be communicative and “elastic.” Some reflections on this theme. In this contribution I would like to report on two episodes recently reported to me and their implications for an approach to diversity management in a continuously evolving social context. Episode 1. In a well-known multinational corporation, during a meeting, it is pointed out to an employee that her Southern Italian accent ...
LGBTQI+ Diversity: When the Going Gets Tough, What Do Businesses Do?
After the initial months of the actions of the new right-wing government and parliamentary majority, the road seems clear: the organizational environment taking hold will be increasingly hostile to issues of diversity and inclusion. Once again, it is striking that businesses are absent in the debate. And we must ask where the social responsibility trumpeted during LGBTQI+ pride month or other occasions for visibility has gone. The political and legal context represents two important dimensions of the organizational environment, i.e. the framework in which organizations act. Italy saw an important ...