AXA Italia, the AXA Research Fund and Bocconi University renew their commitment to the AXA Research Lab on Gender Equality

Established in 2020 and led by Professor Paola Profeta, Dean for Diversity, Inclusion and Sustainability and Full Professor of Finance at Bocconi University, one of the leading international experts on Gender and Public Policy, the Lab represents a unique example in Italy.

Centre of excellence and innovation, it has been operating for 3 years by adopting a rigorous scientific methodology, an interdisciplinary approach in the fields of economics and gender policies and a European perspective.

Its goals are to increase awareness of gender disparities in society, explore opportunities for women in the economy, encourage institutional decision-makers to act, and build a more inclusive society, to achieve the goal set in the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Since its inception, the Lab has worked on 6 research streams (education; work, family and fertility; culture; politics; women's empowerment; policy), exploring the theme of gender equality at 360° and has carried out 35 research projects, 125 conferences, seminars, lectures, 111 publications and 3 annual events.

Of significant impact and scientific relevance, the results achieved so far include, for example: in the workplace research has been done to measure unconscious gender bias in management and its impact on selection processes, limiting women's access to roles of power, and studying the negative correlation between work environments characterized by a lack of attention to harassment phenomena or hyper-competitive masculinity models and female careers.

In the field of education, great attention has been given to the issue of gender divide in STEM subjects, highlighting the need for an intervention on the current models of assessment of skills, basically based on multiple-choice and timed tests, which tend to penalize women. Additionally, emphasis has been placed on the importance of working on role models to break down stereotypes that lead girls and boys to consider certain jobs as being for either women or men.

Furthermore, in the political and economic field, the research conducted has contributed to highlighting the positive relationship between gender equality and wealth redistribution systems.

On the social front, a strong correlation has been demonstrated between issues related to an aging population and the gender divide: in countries where women participate more in the labor market, fertility rates are higher, suggesting that gender equality in the labor market can balance the ageing process. Additionally, in the family sphere, the study and measurement of the impact of Covid in terms of the she-cession, as well as its long-term effects such as the redistribution of family workload thanks to the greater spread of smart working models.

At the core of the new commitment for the next 3 years, a further boost to research with a specific focus on the labor market, including the study, for example, of the impact of gender stereotypes on selection decisions; in politics, with the aim of continuing to provide policy recommendations to promote gender equality; in education, with a further focus on women's access to STEM subjects. 

As part of the new initiatives, there are also specific projects on increasingly relevant topics, such as studying of the effects of AI on gender inequality, potential biases in the workplace related to specific clusters (i.e. working mothers, single mothers, women with disabilities, LGBTQ+), gender gaps and caregivers.