Inapp 2025 Gender policy report

The 2025 edition of the annual Gender Policy Report published by the Italian National Institute for Public Policy Analysis (Inapp) offers, as it does every year, a gender-based analysis of the Italian labour market. The report maps gender gaps in the labour market by analysing the structural, cultural and institutional factors behind them, as well as the mechanisms that keep them in place. In particular, the 2025 edition emphasizes the need to understand and shape economic, social and technological transformations through a gender-sensitive research approach.

The report was developed by Inapp in its capacity as Intermediate Body for the National Programme “Youth, Women and Work” (ESF+ 2021-2027). Drawing on rigorous evidence, it helps to identify barriers to women’s participation in the labour market, assess the effectiveness of existing policies, and guide policy-makers towards targeted interventions.

According to the report, despite progress recorded in 2024, women remain underrepresented in the labour market. This reflects an interlocking set of institutional factors, cultural norms, welfare regimes, organisational practices and market logics that produce different effects on men and women, limiting the economy’s ability to grow and fully harness available human capital.

The report is structured into seven chapters. The first provides an overview of employment trends from a gender perspective, highlighting structural differences between men and women. The second chapter focuses on the gender inequalities shaping early career trajectories, while the third addresses the relationship between poverty and in-work poverty through a gender lens, showing how women are often more exposed to low-paid and unstable work.

Against the backdrop of ongoing demographic change, the fourth chapter examines paid domestic work in light of rising care needs and emerging policy challenges. The fifth chapter centres on the interaction between gender, cultural values and the labour market.

The report concludes with an assessment of how the gender dimension has been integrated into the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), arguing that only through systematic monitoring and the use of disaggregated data will it be possible to verify whether – and to what extent – PNRR resources genuinely contribute to reducing gender inequalities in the labour market.

Read the full report