Higher employment rate for mothers with a degree

Both in Italy and in Europe, approximately half of adult women (25-54 years) have children and the other half are childless. The presence of children is therefore similar, but the female employment rate in Italy is the lowest in Europe. In our country, 65% of adult women without children work compared to 79% of the European average; for women with children the employment rate is even lower: 59% in Italy and 74% in Europe. The remuneration of Italian employed women is very close to the European average, so why does their employment rate slip so low compared to all other countries?

First of all, differences in educational qualifications must be taken into account. In fact, even in our country the employment rate grows very markedly with the increase in educational qualifications: for women without children it goes from 44.7% when they have no educational qualifications to 79.2% of graduates; for women with children it goes from 37% to 82.5% respectively. In Italy, however, there are too few adult women with a degree compared to the European average: they are only 27.7% versus 41.6%, last in the ranking following Romania. Even considering only employed women, the result changes little: employed women with a degree in Europe are one in two (47.4%), in Sweden 66 out of a hundred employed women have a degree, in Ireland 68 out of one hundred, but in Italy only one employed woman out of three have a degree (36%).

If on the one hand the qualification increases the female employment rate, the presence of children causes it to move in the opposite direction. This is true for the aggregate of all qualifications, both in Italy and in Europe, but it is not true for Italian graduates: the employment rate of graduates with children is in fact higher, and not lower, than that of female graduates. without children.

To understand the causes of this difference in the employment rate of Italian graduates, we examine the family type in which adult women are placed. Families can be of 3 types: single women; women in couples; women in the family “of another type”. Families called “other types” are made up of adults who are not a couple, for example a parent who lives with their children and with their children’s grandparents. For all educational qualifications, whatever the type of family, the presence of children reduces the employment rate of mothers, both in Italy and in Europe. Even for graduates who live alone or as a couple, the employment rate of mothers is lower than that of women without children, both in Italy and in Europe. But for graduates who live in “other type” families, the opposite happens, both in Italy and in Europe: the presence of children raises the employment rate instead of lowering it.

What makes “other type” families capable of raising the employment rate of graduate mothers, instead of lowering it? In these families there is the possibility that grandparents with cohabiting children can look following the children while the parents are at work, and in Italy grandparents constitute a fundamental resource for the provision of informal childcare. A survey conducted by Eurostat in 2018 on the reconciliation between professional and family life shows that the majority of individuals with care responsibilities for minors do not use any professional childcare services (nursery schools, nurseries, babysitters). ), both because these services are not available or are too expensive, and because parents organize themselves or resort to informal support such as grandparents. Women aged 25-49 who have care responsibilities, but who do not use childcare services, are 76% in Italy and 63% in Europe, and even considering only graduates, these percentages drop by little: 57% in Italy and 54% in Europe.