Nurturing women leaders at Bocconi with OTB

In Italy, only 19.1% of top positions in institutional bodies - such as the Constitutional Court, the Superior Council of the Judiciary, the Embassies, and market authorities such as the Consob exchange commission - are filled by women. In Italian listed companies only 2% of CEOs are women, and on bank boards this falls to 1%. In the Italian Parliament, moreover, less than 35% of senators and 36% of deputies are women. In STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) subjects there is still a wide gender divide among university students (just 17% of students enrolled in STEM degrees are females), not to mention the gender pay-gap, the wage differential which still awaits women once they enter the labor market.

OTB Foundation has always been alongside women in Italy and abroad with projects that protect and, at the same time, support them in their path to full emancipation. This is why the Foundation has decided to stand alongside the next generation of women who will lead Italian companies and the country by supporting them in their university training. The Italian managerial class of the future, in public administrations as well as in private companies, is bound to see a greater presence of women, and higher education is the principal way to promote this process.

Bocconi University, the top Italian university in international rankings, has embraced the project promoted by the OTB Foundation and will provide financial aid to female students enrolled in three-year undergraduate degrees in Italian universities that are strongly motivated to become the leaders of the future, and pass the selection process on the basis of their academic curriculum and socio-economic condition.

With an initial investment of €280,000, the Foundation will cover the costs of a two-year Master of Science at Bocconi University for the female students selected, who will be able to choose from four graduate programs - Economics and Management of Government and International Organizations; Politics and Policy Analysis; International Management; Management - which enable access to managerial posts in public administrations and large corporations, where a greater presence of women is necessary and desirable.

Attendance of female graduate students with the financial support of the OTB Foundation to the above-mentioned Bocconi MSc programs will start in September 2022. Registrations are already open on the Bocconi University website and the deadline for the last session of the admission test is 17 March 2022.

Arianna Alessi, vice president of the OTB Foundation so comments the initiative: "The Foundation's commitment to supporting women, my experience as a woman executive in sectors still dominated by men, and the data we read daily on gender inequality have led us to this project which we hope will develop over time, by involving other actors in the business world and government institutions. In our country we are still very far from giving the right value to female employment and it is therefore necessary to promote an organizational culture that is more sensitive to gender issues. In our view, female empowerment means creating a world fit for women by nurturing the potential of each and every woman thanks to education. In the project we want to involve also the student beneficiaries, to whom we ask to commit themselves to support other women, both in terms of mentoring and – in the future – by helping fund other scholarships, thus creating a virtuous circle of women helping professionally other women."

"Investing in education and training means investing in our future and doing so by giving young women the opportunity to enter graduate studies has a double value", comments Gianmario Verona, Bocconi Rector. "Promoting gender equality in a concrete way as is the case with this initiative will have beneficial effects on the economy and society as a whole. In this delicate phase for our societies, we need the commitment of the best talents and to find them we must remove any obstacles that might prevent them from having a positive impact on the world of work and institutions. Among these, barriers related to gender must become a legacy of the past."