Gender Inequalities in Italian Academia. What Future for Female Academics?

In the last 20 years, the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) has enacted two major reforms and passed a number of parliamentary acts that have radically changed the Italian academic system, e.g., the role of the permanent researcher was abolished and different types of fixed-term researchers were introduced. So far, very little is known on the effects of these reforms on men and women's career progressions. Using a unique dataset that includes information on the whole Italian academic staff, this paper aims to provide an overview of the changes that the reforms introduced in the academic system and compare male and female scholars' conditions within the university. The focus of the paper is on the young cohorts of academics who work as researchers. The main finding is that, in a context in which the selection and recruitment processes are not exclusively based on merit, the "gender neutral" MIUR reforms are contributing to the reproduction of the female disadvantage.