Women in construction in Italy
Women in construction, a new and significant challenge for TOPTAGLIO. We are looking for 4 female individuals to increase their presence on construction sites in Italy. They will be offered a fixed-term contract (building industry national collective labor agreement) for 3 months, aimed at training in various aspects of modern construction. Once the training period is completed, these resources will be offered a permanent employment contract within the company. Check out our career page (in Italian only) to learn more about our job offer.
This initiative also aims to create complete openness to the “No gender gap” dimension, promoting gender equality even in an industry that tends to be predominantly male-oriented.
It is part of TOPTAGLIO’s philosophy (and conviction) that working in the field of construction not only requires physical strength but also technical and relational skills, as well as a deep understanding of all construction site dynamics. These are competencies that can be the domain of anyone, without any gender differences.
In general, what are considered heavy-duty tasks today are no longer such because technology helps us exert less effort and be safer. So, it is not clear why the female workforce is less represented in this sector,” emphasizes Paolo Ceresoli, CEO of TOPTAGLIO, in an interview with Askanews. “In this day and age, anyone can operate an excavator in total safety. Therefore, I want to encourage women to come and give it a try. That’s why I have designed this paid course exclusively for them, to stimulate the entry of women into the operational construction world.”
This new perspective, or rather vision, has undoubtedly not yet gained a foothold in the labor market. This is confirmed by the latest data collected by Ance Como (in a special report dedicated to us by Repubblica), which reveals that in Lombardy, the presence of women among the 288,000 workers employed in the construction sector in 2022 is only 10%. At the national level, just as in Lombardy, the percentage of women enrolled in Formedil courses (the unique body for training, safety, qualification, and professional retraining in the construction sector) is around 10% of the total. According to data collected in Lombardy by the Fondazione ITS Cantieri dell’arte (a regional professional post-diploma training organization), there has been an increase in female enrollments in the two-year courses organized in Brescia and Milan in recent years.
We need to continue down this path because this initiative has all the potential to become a well-established reality. This is attested to by those who have already had this kind of experience in our company: “Since I joined TOPTAGLIO, I have always been given the opportunity to test myself and grow personally and professionally,” says our young surveyor and safety supervisor, Chiara Passarello, in an interview with La Provincia di Como. “Being a young woman on a construction site is a daily challenge. You have to be able to balance listening to those who do the work every day, understand when to assert yourself, laugh and joke when necessary, have authority when dealing with important matters like workplace safety and rule compliance. The welcome from my colleagues has been very positive because they never make me feel out of place. They treat me exactly as if I were one of them, because I am”
Images of the TOPTAGLIO team working in Milan, Italy
