Is vocational training useful for full labour integration of women? An integrated assessment based on the Piedmont experience

Literature and European Commission reports show that women are disadvantaged subjects on the labour market, although they are more ambitious and at their best on the educational side. This paper aims at verifying whether vocational training (VT) helps in overcoming this apparent paradox, ensuring higher employment levels and better working conditions. It is based on placement data of VT students from the Piedmont Region, who accomplished their training course during 2011. Analyses have been performed on interviews, in order to evaluate the effects of training on the trainees' medium-term employment outcomes, and integrated with data on after-course careers coming from the employment centres. A control sample has been selected with the aim to evaluate the net effect of training, with a special focus on women. A multiple approach to the evaluation of labour insertion has been adopted, including: placement indicators (macro approach), composite individual scores of integration (micro approach taking into account the qualitative aspects of work), probit models and average marginal effects (allowing to estimate the net impact of training and the determinants of employability). Further in-deep analysis to verify the persistence of gender differences in labour insertion paths concerns sectorial segregation and longitudinal analysis of training-to-labour transitions through duration models. Results suggest that the employment gap between men and women is completely recovered among trainees, also when considering qualitative aspects of employment. Conclusions are twofold, showing from the one side the multidimensional attitude of labour insertion and the effectiveness of training policies to reduce gender gaps, and secondly the limits and potentialities of the different instruments adopted in assessing gender disparities.