For Cristina Scocchia, the coats tell the story. Long before the 50-year-old took over as chief executive officer of Italy’s Illycaffe, she was CEO at another firm when a group of male visitors arrived for a meeting and proceeded to hand her their coats, assuming she was someone’s assistant.
Italy has progressed since then, but the coffee maker’s chief says gender bias and stereotypes still hamper progress for the nation’s female executives, reflecting a corporate landscape where women hold just a handful of the top jobs.
“I am always the exotic CEO,” Scocchia said in an interview for Bloomberg’s Italian-language podcast, Quello Che i Soldi Non Dicono, as she related the hurdles keeping more women from breaking through in what is still a highly male-dominated country.
Photo: EPA-EFE
While women everywhere have struggled to land top corporate jobs, the situation is particularly dire in Italy.
Just 3.9 percent of Italian firms had a woman as their CEO at the end of last year, according to a Deloitte report.
WRONG DIRECTION
Even worse, the country appears to be heading in the wrong direction — the most recent number is almost half as many as in 2021.
Italy’s underperformance looks even more stark when considering chief financial officer positions. Just 5.7 percent of Italian companies have a woman in that role, compared with a global figure of 17.6 percent.
Scocchia and Iveco Group NV chief financial officer Anna Tanganelli, another of the country’s rare top female executives, said Italians lack awareness that women have the same right to professional advancement as men — and that both genders bear equal responsibility for raising children and caring for aging parents.
Instead, that burden falls largely on the women in Italian families, and the state does little to help.
“Last but not least, the country needs more services to support parents,” Scocchia said.
Where Rome has weighed in — with landmark 2011 legislation imposing quotas for women on corporate boards — the effect has been dramatic. Italy is now among the top six in percentage of women serving on boards, with a share above 40 percent, the Deloitte report said.
The quotas “have been super-helpful in breaking the glass ceiling into boardrooms,” Tanganelli said on the podcast, adding that the legislation has been “the driving force behind the increase in the presence of women on management committees.”
However, both executives acknowledged that the quota system has been a double-edged sword for Italian women, leading to sometimes painful debates over merit.
BITTER MEDICINE
Scocchia called the quotas “a very bitter, but necessary medicine” to shake up the system and give women a foot in the door.
“The battle for gender equality can’t be won without them,” she said.
The measure may be giving women who would otherwise have been shut out a chance to show their mettle, and to demonstrate that they can bring a unique mix of skills to the table.
Tanganelli, who has defied the odds with her rise up the ranks in the uber-male auto industry, said women’s ability to fuse empathy, competence and inclusion is a trait most men cannot match, and one that shows itself in the form of grace under pressure during tense crisis periods like the recent COVID-19 pandemic.
We women “have an underlying resilience that helps overcome complexity, even in managing crisis and adversity,” Tanganelli said.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS