C‘It’s a type of equality that we would never have wanted to achieve and so quickly. It’s about girls and young women leaving Italytired of waiting for the country to notice them. Today there are as many young women leaving as men and they do so with the same bitter toll, the same pragmatism.
If salaries here are stuck in the nineties, if here it is difficult to assert the meritif here work is a long apprenticeship and a career is a swamp, since in Milan rent is now as expensive as in Berlin or Paris, you might as well move there. Except that, compared to their male peers, the girls who pack their bags take with them an even larger fortune away from Italy and it is surprising that such a heavy deficit goes unnoticed. Do we understand what is actually slipping away when these girls leave?
Brain drain: girls leaving Italy
Let’s take the question from the beginning. When the wave began, in 2011, the journey abroad was still a predominantly male route. Women made up 43.6 percent of Italians between 18 and 34 who left: in just over ten years the number of girls has become just under half the sizewith peaks in 2024 of 49.3 percent from the regions of the North West and 50.5 percent from the North East, a figure which here sealed the overtaking of young expats on their male peers. The reason can be clearly seen in the numbers of those who remain in Italy: if we consider 100 young women of that age, just 45 have a job, compared to 59 of the males, 14 percentage points less: an abyss.
The employment gap was not enoughwomen who remain in Italy find many traps on their path, even after being hired: when they arrive in the company, in fact, will have to face the wage challengewhich are systematically lower than those earned by men, and that of careerswhich immediately crash into the well-known glass ceilings. The Cnel (National Council of Economy and Labor) has recently put a gender lens on this new diaspora and did so through the report “The attractiveness of Italy for young people from advanced countries“; an investigation which, in trying to understand why foreign talents avoid us, ends up photographing exactly why ours leave.
«The decision to move to another advanced European country it is taken above all by people who are more aware of the penalization inflicted on the female gender in Italy in the world of work,” the researchers wrote in the report. «Such greater awareness is normally associated with a higher level of education. These are, therefore, people who would be willing to commit themselves to improving their disadvantaged condition, but who throw in the towel and pack their bags in the belief that changes in Italy, especially in some Italian regions, occur too slowly compared to the passage of their life time.”
The girls who leave to find better jobs, better salaries and above all better rights have become a significant number. A very important loss for the country. (Getty Images)
A loss of value
A higher level of education, therefore, indicates the CNEL: indeed, many data lead us to believe that through migrations abroad we lose more female than male intellectual capital, because women who emigrate are more educated than men. Among emigrants, those with low education are 25.2 percent, compared to 30.2 percent of their peers, and those with degrees are over 38 percent, compared to 32.1 percent of graduates. The same absolute numbers show that between 2011 and 2024 74,500 graduates left Italy, compared to 73,600 graduates, not to mention that we suspect that the girls who leave are in any case better prepared, given that – AlmaLaurea data in hand – women graduate with higher grades than men in almost all disciplines and that even at the end of high school they graduate better.
This is a huge loss for the country: 159.5 billion euros, between school and family costs incurred, is the value of expatriated human capital, 7.7 percent of GDP, an account that statistics for now do not divide by gender, and yet, knowing that those who leave are increasingly women and educated, it is easy to understand how much of this treasure has a female name.
Looking for good welfare
But there is another capital, not easy to quantify but certainly enormous, that these girls pack in their suitcase together with their degree: «Many of these women will become mothers and raise families abroadgenerally adapting to the number of children per woman in the country where they will settle, which is on average higher than that of Italy” says Luca Paolazzi, who edited the CNEL report together with Valentina Ferraris, and which estimates that 45/60 thousand children a year may not be born in Italy due to migrationbut elsewhere: it is the most generous gift that Italy can give to neighboring countries at the moment, the worst own goal for itself, considering the endless collapse of births.
Luca Paolazzi goes further and considers that the young women who leave also do so to look elsewhere for better conditions to become mothers: «This fact must be strongly underlined. It is now an established fact that in our country it is much more difficult to reconcile work and family life. In companies in countries like France and Germany, the announcement of a woman who is expecting a baby is greeted with celebration; in ours, on the contrary, it is perceived as a disturbance, a cost: it has not yet been understood, if those who work are happy, increases the company’s profitability. It is no coincidence that Germany or France today face a less dramatic birth rate.”
Better opportunities and above all rights
He continues: «In the chapter of the Cnel report edited by Professor Alessandro Rosina, the very interesting data emerges from a demographic survey conducted by the Toniolo Institute among 18-34 year olds resident in Italy, according to which for a young woman who leaves, having your rights recognized is almost as important as finding better professional opportunitieswhich does not happen for males.” The young women interviewed by the Toniolo Institute speak of the drive to find elsewhere “greater recognition of civil rights and greater efficiency of the public welfare system”, i.e. nurseries, schools with a calendar and timetables that facilitate reconciliation, structural support for those who become parents.
«The high level of education produces greater self-awareness and also a greater search for emancipation: these women go and look elsewhereeven more so if they are educated, an equality of opportunities that really struggles to establish itself in our countryto the point that working mothers continue to be heavily penalized here.”
A global life project
«Research by the Bank of Italy» concludes Paolazzi, «reveals that a worker who becomes a mother suffers, throughout his working life, a reduction in income of 52 percentthe infamous “child penalty”. Therefore, these young women move to see their skills valorised, but also to realize a global life project. Once they have done so by starting a family, returning to Italy becomes even more unlikely.” And there is a part of Italy where the most educated girls are the protagonists of a double form of migration, the South: from here we set off towards the more dynamic regions of Northern Italy or towards Europe.
The latest Svimez report (the private non-profit association that studies the economy and society of the South) – it is called “One country, two emigrations” – reveals that from 2002 to 2024, 195 thousand graduate women under 35 have left the South to settle in a city in the Centre-North42 thousand more than men, and that the share of qualified people among those heading to the Center-North has grown over the years, especially among women: from 22 percent in 2002 to almost 70 percent in 2024, against an increase from 14.6 percent to 50.7 percent among men. But the South is also empty of graduates aiming for a foreign country and which are also experiencing structural growth: today the percentage of graduates among young southern migrants reaches 45 percent (35 percent for men).
The anticipated brain drain of girls from the South
«Overall, the data indicate that female mobility from the South is increasingly concentrated on highly educated profiles, reinforcing the qualitatively selective nature of the outflow of human capital» the Svimez researchers clearly comment. «Our studies have confirmed that in the South, where advanced activities that require qualified skills are generated, the available positions are generally occupied by men» adds Serenella Caravella, senior researcher at Svimez.
«This phenomenon is grafted onto an already very fragile economy, with employment and inactivity rates particularly alarming for womenand we know that in most cases women are inactive because they are trapped in the care burdens that traditional society entrusts to them. If we consider that where there is economic fragility, public welfare is also fragile – i.e. nurseries and structures serving the conciliation between work and family -, a very serious vicious circle is generated, exactly the one due to which a growing number of girls leave these areas in search of employment, adequate salaries, welfare and gender equality”.
The girls’ escape begins well before graduationwith early migration in the course of study, motivated by the choice to approach labor markets with more opportunities. «Today, those who can anticipate migration when they start university and even more so for the master’s degree, especially if it concerns scientific subjects” continues the researcher. “We know that already during adolescence the idea that it might be beneficial to move towards areas with opportunities for improving one’s life takes shape.”