Size and Characteristics
In most European countries immigrant women are more numerous than immigrant men, with the exception of Germany (47%), Slovenia (47%), Luxembourg (49%), Norway (49%) and Romania (38%). Among the countries with a historically large immigrant presence, Italy hosts the highest share of immigrant women over the total immigrant population (55%), and such a gender imbalance has been following a slightly upward trend in the past fifteen years (from 53.6% in 2005 to 55% in 2019). Instead, on average in Europe the share of immigrant women has remained quite stable over time, with a total growth of only 0.2 percentage points between 2005 and 2019.
On average, women represent more than half of the immigrant population among Europeans and Americans, while African and Asian immigrants are more frequently men (Figure 12). In Italy, too, there is a predominance of women among European and American migrants, whereas the majority of immigrants from other origins are men. However, the gender skewness within areas is greater in Italy. While in Europe as a whole, African and Asian women make up just short of 50% of immigrants from these areas, in Italy they only account for, respectively, 43 and 46%. Conversely, across EU countries, on average 52.5 and 56.6% of European and American immigrants are women, respectively, while in Italy women represent 59 and 61.2% of immigrants from Europe and the Americas.
The high gender imbalance within areas of origin in Italy is mirrored in the lower than average share of immigrants who live with their partner. While in Europe 68% of adult immigrants cohabit with their partner or spouse, the share among immigrants in Italy is lower, 66%. The higher share of immigrants not living with their partner in Italy relative to the rest of Europe does not originate from differences in countries of origin of immigrants. In fact, for immigrants from all areas of origins, the share of immigrant couples is lower in Italy with respect to the European average, and in some cases the gap is substantial. The difference between Italy and Europe goes from 1 percentage point among EU immigrants and immigrants from the Americas and Oceania, to 5 percentage points among Africans and Europeans from outside the EU.
A convenient way of summarising and quantifying the gender differences in areas of origin of immigrants in each country is through a segregation index, such as the Duncan Dissimilarity Index. Such an index measures the extent to which immigrant men and women in each country are differently distributed across areas of origin, and it has an intuitive interpretation: its value indicates the share of the immigrant women whose area of origin should change for the distribution by area of origin to be the same for both men and women. For instance, a value of the Index of 0.05 implies that 5% of immigrant women should be “reallocated” to a different area of origin, in order to equalize the share of men and women from each origin.
The Duncan Index in European countries is equal to 0.04, and it has remained stable over time. In contrast, Italy is the second country where the Index is highest, after Finland (0.15), and it is more than three times the European average (0.14 v. 0.04). Among the countries that are above the European average, most are Southern European: Spain (0.07), Greece (0.07) and Italy (0.14).
Education
Across Europe, immigrant women are slightly more educated than immigrant men: slightly less than one in three immigrant women in Europe holds a tertiary degree (3 percentage points more than immigrant men) and about one in three has at most a lower secondary education (1 percentage point less than immigrant men. In almost all European countries, the share of immigrant women with a tertiary degree is higher than the share of immigrant men. The only exceptions – among the countries with more than 5% of immigrants in the population – are Luxembourg and Switzerland, where the two are almost equal (54% and 45%, respectively). Likewise, in most countries, the share of immigrant women with a high level of education is between 30% and 40%.
Italy and Greece are the two countries in which the share of highly educated immigrant women is lowest (respectively, 17% and 19%), while Ireland and Luxembourg are the countries in which the share is highest (respectively, 58% and 54%), among those with a significant immigrant presence. As we have seen in Part 1, these same countries are also among those with, respectively, the least and the most educated populations of natives. In fact, immigrants’ education levels mirror quite closely those of natives, both among men and women, and the educational levels of immigrant men and women are strongly correlated within countries (coefficient of correlation 0.73).
The positive correlation between the education of immigrant women and men within each origin country holds also across countries of origin (Figure 15). However, not among all areas of origin immigrant women are more highly educated than immigrant men: while in most countries European immigrant women (both from within and from outside the EU) hold a university degree more frequently than men, the opposite is true among African immigrants. Instead, there is a strong variation across Europe in the shares of immigrant men and women with a tertiary education from the Americas and Asia. In Italy, across all origins immigrant women are more frequently educated at a university level than immigrant men (17% vs 10%). The difference is smaller among Africans and Americans, while it is largest among Europeans from outside of the EU, where the share of women with a tertiary degree is more than twice the share of men (22 v. 9%).
Evolution over time
On average in Europe, native and immigrant women are becoming more educated more quickly than men. Over the past fifteen years, the share of all individuals with a tertiary degree has been increasing, and correspondingly the share of all individuals with at most a lower secondary degree has been decreasing. However, the share of highly educated immigrant women has been higher than the share of men since 2005, while the share of low educated immigrant women has been lower than the share of men since 2016. Meanwhile, the education levels of native men and women have been following similar trajectories (Figure 16).
Italy stands out among European countries for two reasons. Not only are immigrant education levels in Italy lower than the European average (and among the lowest in Europe), but they have not been improving at all in the past decade and a half. In fact, while the share of low- educated Italian natives has decreased by about 15 percentage points in the past 15 years, the corresponding share of immigrants has remained stable between 2005 and 2015 for both men (50%) and women (42%), and it has even slightly increased in the past 5 years (by 2.5 p.p. men, by 1.5 p.p. women). At the same time, the share of immigrant men with a tertiary level of education has remained stable around 10 percent, and the share of highly educated immigrant women has increased extremely slowly (from 14 to 17% between 2005 and 2020).
Figure 6
Share of immigrant men and women with a tertiary and lower secondary education, over time
Even though, in Europe, both immigrant and native women have become better educated over the last fifteen years, the growth in educational achievements of native women has been faster, thus leading to an increase of the immigrant-native education gap. The difference between the share of highly educated immigrant and native women has widened, from -0.7 percentage points in 2005 to -4.5 p.p. in 2020, while the gap between the share of immigrant and native women with a lower secondary degree has increased by almost 5 percentage points. On average the share of immigrant women with a low education has decreased by 10 percentage points (from 43 to 33%), and the share with a high level of education has increased by 10 percentage points (from 23 to 33%), reducing substantially the educational polarization of immigrant women (Figure 18).
Instead, the education levels of immigrant women in Italy have remained stable over time, and concurrently Italian women have become better educated. These diverging trends have led to a more than threefold increase in the difference between the share of immigrant and native women with tertiary degrees (from 3 to 10 percentage points), and between the share of immigrant and native women who hold a lower secondary degree (from 2 to -7 percentage points).
Figure 18: The gap in education between immigrant and native women is increasing
Difference between the share of immigrant and native women, by education level
