As gender pay gap and unequal opportunity remain pressing issues, passionate individuals rise as advocates for justice, and catalysts for change. Thus, we will regularly feature EQUAL-SALARY ambassador’s professional experiences as inspiration for systemic change towards a more equitable future.
Meet Beatrice Olivari.
Beatrice Olivari has been a Senior Manager in a Multinational Company for over 23 years, before taking on new challenges in a Fintech company in Rome, Italy:
I am a Senior Manager with twenty years’ experience in multinational Companies.
I started my career 25 years ago in an entry-level position, with a clear vision in mind of how I wanted like to grow professionally within the company I worked for.
I had a dream of a role that, at the time, was exclusively designed for men due to its requirement for mobility throughout the country and frequent transfers. Every year, I set this as a goal in my development plan and I can proudly say that I managed to achieve this dream despite difficulties. Thankfully, a very visionary managing director believed in me and broke the glass ceiling.
Today, I often wonder if he hadn’t been there, would I have had the same opportunity? Since then, only one other woman has accessed to the role. This gets to the show that the process of transformation and equal opportunities has begun but the road ahead is long.
However, some top roles remain prerogative of men and the reasons are, frankly speaking, unknown to me, both in private and public companies. Twenty years ago, companies began to introduce pink shares in managerial positions and subsequently equal pay certifications. Today, I collaborate with various associations whose mission is to stimulate the debate on gender gap and equal pay, and I am part of a new regional project “women on board” which aims to develop a short list of women with certified skills that can be used when identifying successors in top positions, in public administration as well as in small and medium-sized enterprises.
Goal 5 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development established by the United Nations states: achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. Where are we today? The process has begun but we still have a long way to go to fight inequality not only for ourselves but for our daughters and our daughters’ daughters.
Beatrice Olivari
To learn more about the EQUAL-SALARY’s Ambassador Program and how you can get involved in the closing the gender pay gap worldwide, please visit our dedicated page.
