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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Economy & business fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about economy & business. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

7,106 published reviews in this topic

Pagella PoliticaEconomy & business

«Le donne che lavorano nel nostro Paese sono troppo poche, il 48% contro il 64% della media europea. Al Sud, in particolare, è una vera catastrofe: l'occupazione femminile è al 32%»

Publisher’s rating: Vero

The claim concerns figures Mara Carfagna gave in an interview with Il Mattino on March 2: that women’s employment in Italy was about 48%, against a European average of 64%, and that it was 32% in the South. The review compares those rounded figures with employment-rate data for women aged 15–64. It reports that in the third quarter of 2020 Italy’s rate was 48.5%, while the EU-27 average was 62.4%. The national figure therefore closely matches Carfagna’s 48%, but her 64% comparison is higher than the figure reported for the EU average. For southern Italy, the review cites Istat data for the same quarter: women’s employment stood at 32.3%, close to the claimed 32%. It also identifies Campania, Sicily and Calabria as the regions with the lowest rates, at 28.2%, 28.8% and 29.5%, respectively. These figures substantiate the claim’s description of a particularly low rate in the South, while showing that the quoted 32% is rounded. The review checks whether the pandemic might make the 2020 figures unrepresentative by comparing them with the final quarter of 2019. It reports a national female employment rate of 50.1% then, and a southern rate of 33.1%. On that comparison, the 2020 rates were somewhat lower, but the review says the difference was limited. Its overall assessment rests on the close match between the quoted figures and the 2020 data, with the EU-average figure as the notable imprecision.