Women of wine in Sicily: analysis of their role, motivation and work

Abstract

Recent surveys on female employment show that, in Italy, the number of Women Entrepreneurs has constantly increased. In the Italian agriculture sector (See “Coldiretti Report 2008”) little more than 30% of Italian workers are women. This phenomenon is primarily due to the strong demand for innovation but also thanks to the European Agriculture Politics that provides special financial facilities to Women Entrepreneurs. Due to the continuous need for innovation, the wine business gives significant employment opportunities to women. The strong competition in this sector, especially in new export markets, has induced many companies to focus more in innovation. Indeed, it was successfully done by women working in the industry. If we step back, since ancient times women have always played a key role in the wine business and this information has been passed on by various documents. In recent years the involvement is also increased for the Sicilian wineries where the role of women gradually has become more prominent. Today the range of activities that women do in wine business goes from production to marketing and sales. This work aims to study the "Women of Wine" in Sicily, those entrepreneurs or managers who hold leadership and decision-making roles within the wineries, focusing on age, qualification, type of activity, motivations that led to undertake the task, difficulties encountered, and also on changes made by women in the firm. For the interviews we used a questionnaire with, in some cases, multiple choice answers, which was given to women, business owners or managers of the wineries surveyed. By calculating the coefficient of contingency we intended to measure the association between some factors of development of women-run wineries in Sicily, namely between professional characteristics of women managers deemed most important for this investigation, and some characteristics of firms (communication, innovations, etc.). By the analysis of results we observed that the wine firms with women at managerial levels are real positive, innovative and growing business, that can open new and better development prospects for this sector.