AGRICULTURE: CONFLAVORO, 'ONE IN TWO WOMEN WORKERS WILL LOSE THEIR JOB'

"Women agricultural workers over 50 will be the first to succumb if European policy does not change direction to meet the needs of the sector". This was underlined by Roberto Capobianco, national president of Conflavoro . "In a decade, 42% of women employed in agriculture have disappeared, going from 1.4 million to 823 thousand, 82% of whom are over 50 years of age. Covid and the war in Ukraine have created a further employment shock for a sector that represents 3.4% of the total workers in Italy of which 2% are women, but the crisis has been evident for many years: today the female gender represents 30% of agriculture compared to 37% in 2010, when there were a total of 3.9 million workers in the sector compared to around 2.75 million today". A serious problem which, Conflavoro reports, is already affecting female-led businesses. "Even as regards female managers, the agricultural sector is led by very elderly people: in 2021 there were only 40,530 under 45s (3.6% of a total of 1.13 million companies). In the last 10 years, the 28% of agricultural businesses are headed by women, who today represent 31.5% of the total and are present above average in Abruzzo, Campania, Basilicata, Calabria and Molise, in the latter at 40%. We are much better off than other countries, for example Germany where there are not 10% of women managers, but our sectoral economy has a social impact differently from what happens in the rest of the Union. Especially for the entire South, in fact, it is a new problem given that 57.6% of small agricultural businesses are located there and of these over 98% are family-run precisely in Molise and Calabria", concludes Capobianco.