Gender equality, guaranteeing competitiveness and the economy recovery

Studying gender equal opportunities in the company has been traditionally linked to human rights, legal and ethical issues, but little research and empirical proof are available on the impact of women on industrial competitiveness.

Following the work conducted under the SPRI leadership in the 2020 and 2021 White Paper by the “Women in Manufacturing” international expert group, set up by the World Manufacturing Foundation in 2020, SPRI has conducted the analysis detailed in this report in order to bolster the UNIDO statement: “gender equality is not only a matter of human rights, but also a precondition to guarantee competitiveness and the economic recovery”.

The goal of the research is twofold:

• Provide a methodology to analyse the correlation between gender equality and industrial competitiveness
• Conduct a case study to provide data as a factual basis to help to show that greater gender diversity benefits business competitiveness.