Supporting Women in the Luxury Supply Chain: A Focus on Italy

Authors

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  Roberta Pinamonti

  Associate Director, BSR

  

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  Roberta Pinamonti

  Associate Director, BSR

  

  Singapore

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  With more than 14 years of experience in the field of sustainability, Roberta supports companies in translating social and human rights expectations into management practices. In particular, she focuses on supporting companies in the energy and utilities sectors in navigating regulatory trends as well as investor and other stakeholder expectations when it comes to human rights management. She is passionate about renewable energy and leads BSR's work in renewable energy and human rights.

  She has experience with human rights due diligence and impact assessments, code of practice and policy development, sustainability strategy and integration, sustainability reporting, and materiality assessments.

  Prior to joining BSR, Roberta spent six years with Enel, a multinational electric utilities company, as a CSR specialist. She managed projects across various countries, particularly in Latin America, focusing primarily on integrating sustainability into business operations and developing the company's human rights approach. 

  Roberta holds a MA in Economics and CSR and a BA in Economics and Social Sciences from the University of Trento in Italy. An Italian native speaker, Roberta also speaks English, Spanish, and French fluently.

  Close

• Aditi Mohapatra

  Former Managing Director, BSR

• Victoria Reca

  Former Manager, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice, BSR

Luxury brands have committed to supporting women’s empowerment across their value chains. Women not only represent a significant share of luxury brands’ customers and employees—they are also a critical part of luxury companies’ supply chains. Italy, in particular, is well known for being a primary sourcing country for the sector, yet the status of women in the supply chain and opportunities to support women’s economic and social empowerment remain largely unknown and unaddressed.

Across many different countries, women face multiple barriers to achieving gender equality. These include:

• Economic barriers such as overall low labor force participation, high proportion in the informal sector, prevalence in part-time roles, challenges advancing in their careers and into leadership and decision-making roles, unequal compensation levels, and a disproportionate amount of unpaid care work.
• Social barriers such as high rates of gender-based violence and harassment, challenges accessing sexual and reproductive health services, migration and human trafficking risks, weak implementation of anti-discrimination laws, traditional roles of women in society and in the workplace, and hidden gender biases and social norms that are difficult to eradicate.

Italy is no exception. Working women in the country face numerous challenges in the labor market, and little is known about gender equality efforts and the gender gaps impacting women working in the Italian luxury supply chain. With this context in mind, Kering and its family of Italian brands, Bottega Veneta, Gucci, Kering Eyewear, and Pomellato, have engaged BSR to better understand the challenges, ambitions, and opportunities of women workers in today’s luxury supply chain in Italy and identify ways to support their success.

This paper aims to:

• Shed light on the status and challenges faced by women workers in Italy, particularly those working in the luxury sector.
• Identify areas of intervention and provide practical recommendations on actionable next steps, programs, and initiatives that luxury brands could pursue, in cooperation with their suppliers and relevant stakeholders, to address gaps and concerns raised by women workers and work toward the realization of gender equality in the workplace.

This paper summarizes the insights gained from a variety of activities conducted by BSR and Wise Growth between February and September 2019.