ROME - As Italy celebrates International Women’s Day, statistics have revealed that more women than ever are benefiting from professional training schemes.

 The news comes from Fondimpresa, Italy’s leading fund for training across disciplines, who have revealed that over 188,000 women were able to use their schemes to access training for all elements of the workplace in 2018.

 Fondimpresa state that their primary goal is “to make training, an indispensable tool for innovation and development, both easy and accessible to companies and individuals alike.”

 Almost half of these 188,000 beneficiaries were aged between 25 and 49 which highlights a strong growth in young women who have benefited from training schemes at early stages of their career. 19.7% of courses taken taught soft skills, while workplace safety and business management courses were also heavily subscribed to at just over 15% and 13% respectively.

 Vice President of the company Massimo Cestaro lauded the news, however he was quick to point out that there was still much work to be done.

 He said on the matter: “In the face of a heated and recurrent debate surrounding the question of gender equality, the primary indicator of just this, salaries, still points to a net gap between the two genders. This is out of tune with one of the fundamental values of the European Union: gender equality.”

 He called people to remember that proper training, and more accessible training, was key in and individual’s professional career and a way of bringing about a greater parity between men and women in the workplace.  

EA