Cagliari is the province with the highest density of businesses run by women in the total territory: women account for 40.5% of companies and individual businesses, approximately 13,340. This data emerges from research by the Cgia research office in Mestre.
The Sardinian capital leads the national ranking, which sees the South excelling compared to the northern regions of the Peninsula. After Cagliari there are Benevento with 30.5% (9,227), Avellino with 30.2% (11,149), Nuoro with 29.3% (6,743) and Chieti with 28.9% (11,009). The first province of the North is La Spezia which ranks eighteenth at the national level with an incidence of 26.4% (4,582).
Reformulating the national ranking based on the absolute number of female businesses – and here demography and population matter – Rome is at the top with 76,519 businesses (equal to 22.7% of the companies in the province). Milan follows with 57,341 (17.9%), Naples with 55,904 (21.7%), Turin with 44,051 (22.4%) and Bari with 27,975 (28.9%).
As for the impact of female entrepreneurship, "numerous international studies demonstrate how this can be a key to increasing female employment", underlines the Cgia, "women who do business tend to hire other women to a significantly greater extent than their male colleagues". Furthermore, according to specialized literature, women become independent workers due to structural factors (unemployment, family traditions or the presence of economic incentives lead to considering entrepreneurship as a necessity), but also to manage work commitments together with family ones with greater flexibility.
Although Italy continues to have the lowest female employment rate in Europe, it has, in absolute terms, the highest number of self-employed women.
In 2023, women with VAT numbers who work as artisans, traders, shopkeepers or freelancers in the country stood at 1,610,000. This, compared to 1,433,100 in France and 1,294,100 in Germany. The primacy of female entrepreneurs takes on significant importance, if compared to the Italian female population of working age (between 20 and 64 years old) which is made up of 17,274,250 people. France, on the other hand, records a surplus of 1.9 million women compared to this figure and Germany exceeds our figure by a good 7.3 million.
