Luisa De Vita

Family embeddedness and business performance: evidences from women-owned firms

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the family context may affect female firms’ performance by contextualising the study within Italy and empirically analysing 307 Italian women-owned firms. Design/methodology/approach – By using ordinal regressions, this paper empirically investigates the influence of three dimensions of the family context on female firms’ performance, namely: the motivations to start a business; the support from the family once the business is established; and the mechanisms to achieve a suitable balance between work and family life. Findings – Overall, the results offer substantial support for the assumption that female business owners benefit from being pulled into the endeavour, from specific linkages with family and also from selected mechanisms to balance work and family life, thus contributing to show how strong the relationship between a firm’s performance and the family context is for women. Originality/value – Today female entrepreneurship represents an im...

The diversity management approach: new implications for gender policies in Italy

Purpose – The paper, starting from research conducted on the implementations of gender policy in six Italian regions, aims to explore the limits of the actual strategies and ask some questions on the possibility to enter some principles of the diversity management (DM) approach in the Italian context.Design/methodology/approach – The qualitative research was conducted through a textual analysis of the Regional Operative Plain, and some interviews with the different stakeholders involved in the planning and implementations of the policies.Findings – Starting from the characteristics of the regional policies, the research provides some indication of levels of applicability of the DM in the Italian context in terms of both definition and execution of the interventions.Research limitations/implications – The paper presented has important implications for the field of equality and diversity in Mediterranean countries, but the research is based only on institutional policies and not on the organizational measur...

Effects of gender quotas in Italy. a first impact assessment in the Italian banking sector.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a first impact assessment of the Italian quota law in order to explore whether “gender equality by law” contributes to redefining, albeit in part, consolidating and establishing positions of power and decision making. The paper analyses these dynamics by focusing on a specific economic sector, the banking sector. The analysis strives to determine: whether binding quotas are giving rise to an apparent enforcement by building up new distortionary equilibria (such as new forms of horizontal segregation); what extent the financial crisis has impacted on the rhetoric of female representation, and whether it has pushed towards a “regenerative” organizational change aimed at achieving a more inclusive and egalitarian image. Design/methodology/approach The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the theoretical and empirical debate on gender diversity and quota impact. Section 3 reports macro and micro data on the italian system; Section 4 describes the Italian banking system and gives a first impact assessment on Italian banks of the mandatory gender quotas in Italy (the so-called “Golfo-Mosca law,” named after MPs who proposed the law); some qualitative considerations are carried out on the reactions of Italian banks to the financial crisis in terms of “bridge policies” aimed at corresponding to a higher demand of customer satisfaction and fairness. Section 5 concludes and summarizes the finding of the study. Findings The Italian banking system is not so dramatically ranked among the EU countries as in the recent past. The gender rebalance in management bodies could be considered rather satisfying. If we compare ten-year-old findings, the number of women on board of directors has tripled. But data clearly show a dichotomy due to significant differences between listed and non-listed banks. In non-listed banks, women are still relegated to an under-represented position, reaching only 13 percent on boards of directors (as against 33 percent in listed banks). The data confirm the results found in non-financial sector that women are significantly better represented on audit boards. In accordance with all previous studies, no relevant changes can be noticed on key-decision roles: no CEOs or Directors general are women in listed banks, and women are always more represented in non-executive functions. Originality/value The paper analyses the law experience in Italy as a significant case study by proving that rules such as temporary binding gender quotas (introduced by law in 2011) can be useful, but not always enough to remove blocking or distortive factors in organizational ladders.

Le donne nell'accademia italiana: Identità, potere e carriera

towns to these precedents would have allowed us to understand what made them unique as well as how they drew on such precedents. Did they, for example, reflect a changed understanding of man’s relationship to nature, agriculture or industry? Moreover, how did plans that resulted from the bottom-up approach of local activists in the Belice Valley differ from those proposed by the state? While the scope of Fault Lines may not have allowed for such in-depth analysis of the physical plans, the book provokes these questions and in doing so paves the way for future scholarship on the region. Fault Lines thus provides a critical and novel lens through which to understand the intersections between natural disasters, planning and politics.