The survey was carried out on a sample of over 30,000 individuals from 63 countries in the Asia-Pacific area, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East-Africa and North America.
In Italy, although the employment rate of women in September this year was at a record 49.1 per cent, 46 per cent of participants believed that not all careers were suitable for women.
Italy was also reportedly 13.2 points below the European average in terms of female employment.
In addition, 46 per cent of those surveyed said women were paid less than men, a percentage that rose to 58 per cent when only women were sampled.
It seems the public is correct: according to a report on the private sector published by Italian statistics bureau ISTAT on December 31, 2016, women were paid on average 14 per cent less than men in 2014, while the salary gap rose to 30 per cent for university graduates.
The Nielsen study found that 59 per cent of Italian participants thought women were under-represented at a managerial level, a percentage that rose to 70 per cent when only women were polled.
In Italy, only one in five managers are female, well below the European average of one in three, according to EU statistics office Eurostat.
In addition, 55 per cent of those sampled by Nielsen said they believed women needed to work much harder than men to prove their worth, a rate that rose to 60 per cent when only women were surveyed.
When the survey studied the position of women in society, 24 per cent of the Italian sample stated that they did not see any discrimination, against a global average of 43 per cent and a European average of 30 per cent.
As far as family dynamics are concerned, 70 per cent of the Italians surveyed said house chores should be equally divided between men and women.
However, in 44 per cent of the households polled, only women took care of cooking, cleaning and the laundry, while in another 44 per cent activities were shared, and in 8 per cent they were handled by the men.
With ANSA
