One aspect of gender diversity is that of valuing women in their professional careers, including with regard to executive positions in companies. The CONSOB report “On Corporate Governance of Italian listed Companies” published in November 2013 shows that at that date 17% of board positions were held by women (at the end of 2011 it was 7.4%)1, a figure which takes the Country closer to the European average, for example the percentage in France (22%)2. These figures are also the result of Law 120/2011 which introduced in Italy a temporary obligation to ensure that both genders are equally represented on the boards of directors and boards of statutory auditors of listed and public companies. These results also reflect the commitment of companies, which have seized the opportunity presented by the new law to invest in the renewal of their corporate appointment structure, placing greater value on merit and skills, ultimately benefiting the companies themselves and the Country in general.
Gender equality in the world of work, understood not only in terms of opportunities for access to paid work, but above all as opportunities for professional development, is an essential precondition for female emancipation both within democratic institutions and in society in general.
Female representation in parliament is one of the three areas focused on by the MDGs with regard to female empowerment. The process of defining the SDGs is also in line with this view and many potential targets specifically relate to gender equality.
(1) CONSOB, Report on Corporate Governance of Italian Listed Companies, 2013.
(2) European Commission, Women in Economic Decision Making in the EU, 2012.
24.3%
female representation in the Italian subsidiaries
27.4%
female representation in Italian Boards of Statutory Auditors
During 2013 eni confirmed its commitment to increasing the proportion of women in the corporate bodies of its subsidiaries.
Increasing awareness of the issue and effective management of the related actions has enabled the company to achieve the targets set by the law one year ahead of the deadline.
In the foreign subsidiaries, appointments to the boards of directors allowed the target of a 1/5 female presence to be maintained in all situations where there are no legislative or specific local constraints. Within this context, compared to 11.2% of all positions occupied by women in 2013 , 25.84% of positions for which eni is responsible were affected by appointments during the year.
A prototype dashboard was also designed and launched to monitor the diversity of the executive bodies of eni’s subsidiaries, the aim of which is to extract the diversity indicators for each board (gender, experience, nationality and training).
