ROMA (ITALPRESS) – In less than fifteen years, immigrant women’s businesses have increased by more than 56%: a figure far higher than the overall figure of foreign entrepreneurship in Italy, which is now women in a four case and shows an increasingly marked attitude to experimenting unexpected “merceological” areas. It is one of the trends that emerge from the Immigration and Entrepreneurship Report 2025, realized by the Idos Study and Research Centre and the CNA (National Confederation of Crafts and Small and Medium Enterprise), whose presentation is scheduled for next 24 March in Rome (at 9.30) at the conference room of Esperienza Europa – David Sassoli.
Since 2014 the Report has been annually photographing the role of entrepreneurship immigrated into the Italian socio-economic system and highlighting a vitality unknown to the rest of the enterprise, marked on the contrary by a phase of persistent contraction: from 2011 to 2024 immigrant enterprises have grown of 46.9%, against the -7.9% recorded in the same period among the activities guided by people born in Italy.
A phenomenon within which, one year after another, the participation of women has been strengthened, a sign of the slow but progressive reduction of male protagonism and the diversification of the profiles and the prevailing entrepreneurial paths. With an increase of 56.2% between 2011 and 2024 and 8.3% in the last five years, women’s immigrant enterprises stand out for a marked dynamism and reach 164.509 units, a quarter (24.7%) of all entrepreneurial initiatives of immigrants. In the same years, the number of women’s enterprises born in Italy has suffered a marked decline, although they are reduced to the male component in the last period (-3.5% since 2020). Reflexibly, at the end of 2024, enterprises led by women of foreign origin represent an eighth of all the independent female activities of the country (12.6%): an almost double incidence compared to 2011 (7.3%) and higher than that calculated on the whole panorama of national enterprise (including immigrant companies weigh 11.3%).
It is an increase that is linked first of all to the increasing presence of immigrant entrepreneurs in the activities of services, in general expansion in the Italian economy. The main insertion sectors remain trade (48,810 women immigrants) and housing and catering activities (21.517). However, in the last five years to stand out for the higher rates of increase have been the so-called “other services activities” (18.812 and +27.2%) – which include those to the person and today represent the third area of more beaten activity – and a composite group of specialized activities so far not frequented by immigrant entrepreneurship (real estate activity: +33%; financial and insurance activities: +24.7%; professional, scientific and technical activities: +24.2%), which collects almost 10,000 immigrant women, highlighting the increasing capacity of women of foreign origin to seize new opportunities for occupational integration and socio-economic self-promotion.
This is a very important evidence, given that immigrant women remain among the most penalized segments of the employment market, widely conveyed in domestic and care work and with little opportunities for professional mobility, even in the face of high (formal or informal) skills and long stabilization paths. Starting from official statistics and thanks to specific insights, the study highlights not only the trends and characteristics of the phenomenon, but also the sectoral and territorial dynamics, the integration in the production chains, the most representative nationalities. The presentation of the Report will discuss institutional representatives, researchers and entrepreneurs and, in addition to a national synthesis, will also be released on all Italian regions. Further details on the program and how to participate will soon be available.
– Graphical Photo Immigration Report and Entrepreneurship 2025 –
(ITALPRESS).
