GENDER DIVERSITY IN THE WORKPLACES: REGULATORY FRAMEWORK, PUBLIC POLICIES, AND A POSSIBLE FUTURE SCENARIO

The concept of “diversity”, both among employees of a specific organization and among individuals within a whole social community (a city, a region, a country, and so on) incorporates wide, complex, and contrasting perspectives. Even yet there is no unique and convergent definition, diversity is all about differences and dissimilarities among people about demographic variables (race, gender, age, physical abilities, socio economic status, and other personal conditions) or of another kind (values, beliefs, cultural backgrounds, economic standing, and so on) (Weber et al., 2018). Diversity, in other words, is “any attributes that people use to tell themselves that another person is different” (Williams and O’Reilly, 1998, p. 81). All the best practices for manage diversity focus on a certain definition of the concept of diversity, a classification of the different diversity factors, and a set of policies and actions to protect diversity, remove all the discriminations connected to one or more diversity factors, and valuate individuals and groups free from prejudice. In the management field, the concept of diversity management, introduced by Roosevelt Thomas in 1990 referring to the US management context, refers to the business strategy adopted by organizations to recruitment, retention, and inclusive development of individuals from a variety of backgrounds (Thomas, 1991). Since then, due to the huge socio-cultural, political, and economic transformations, along with the globalization of trade and business models, on the one hand, and the migration flows of people across the globe, on the other, the degree of diversity within organizations has grown exponentially and diversity management has become strategic (Al Ariss and Sidani, 2016). Within the field of diversity management, a primary role is covered by the specific issues relating to gender diversity (Badru et al., 2015; Moreno-Gòmez et al., 2018). The areas of the greatest interest of research, both sociological, political and managerial, concern women’s access to the workplaces and the related education and training paths; economic treatment; career opportunities and the possibility of having in charge leadership roles in organizations (CEO, Chairman, Board member, Top Management, Executives). Despite the growing individual and collective awareness of the need to reduce the gender gap (both for salaries and career opportunities), unfortunately, the perception that “women are different” and can’t be equivalent to men in performing certain jobs still appears far from being outdated. In the following the theme of the gender gap is explored by presenting a snapshot of the situation in the EU and in Italy, also considering the consequences of the covid19 1 pandemic. Subsequently, attention is focused on the current Italian regulatory framework. Finally, some concluding remarks and a possible scenario are presented. The choice of Italy as the reference context for the research is motivated, first of all, by the relative backwardness of the country with respect to the issue of gender diversity in the workplaces when compared with other contexts, especially in northern Europe. Furthermore, Italy was chosen due to the recent changes to the regulatory framework which suggest an acceleration in the reduction of the gender gap in the near future.