One out of ten female enterprises speaks a foreign language, an increasingly widespread "language" in the Italian entrepreneurial landscape. In one year they increased by +3,7%. business activities led by immigrant women which bring the number of these companies registered in June 143 to 2018 thousand. Most of these initiatives have less than ten years of life, from 2010 onwards more than 98 thousand companies were born, almost 70% of the total. A very high figure if we consider that in the previous decade (2000-2009) much less than half were born, almost 35. In the 60s there were only 118 foreign female enterprises in the country.
Instead, today it is a large and young entrepreneurial reality, also for the greater presence of under 35s who are in command of 19,4% of foreign women's enterprises (against 11,9% of the total enterprises led by women). The Chinese, Romanians and Moroccans who are more enterprising are above all, who together account for 41% of the foreign female entrepreneurial fabric. In fourth place are Nigerians, then Swiss and Germans. The top ten is closed by the Brazilian women, who represent 1,9% of the female entrepreneurial fabric.
This is what emerges from the photograph taken in June 2018 by the Observatory for female entrepreneurship of Unioncamere and InfoCamere, according to which the foreign component led by women represents 10,7% of the almost 1 million 335 thousand pink companies in Italy. Health and social assistance (62,6%), personal services (57,3%), education (50,9%) are the activities where immigrant business leaders have the greatest impact on the foreign entrepreneurial fabric. But in absolute terms, commerce remains by far the sector with the largest presence of foreign female enterprises (33,6%), followed by accommodation and restaurant services (12,4%) and manufacturing (11%).
Lombardy, Lazio and Tuscany are the regions with the highest number of foreign women's initiatives in Italy, over 57.000 enterprises or 40% of those founded by immigrant entrepreneurs overall. Looking instead at the incidence of foreign women's initiatives on the total number of foreign companies the regional ranking sees Molise in the lead 35,8%, followed by Basilicata 35,2% and Abruzzo 31,5% with a geographical distribution that follows the overall female distribution.
