Abstract

Women's employment in the non profit sector has always been higher than men's employment. However, the last decade witnessed a progressive change: among recently established non profit organizations, while those mainly employing women are decreasing, organizations mainly employing men or with a mixed gender profile are increasing steadily. Available evidence on this new trend encouraged the authors of this paper to carry out an in-depth analysis of non profit institutions with an exclusively female workforce in order to test the hypotheses suggested by the mainstream international literature. The analysis is aimed at identifying valid arguments supporting the hypothesis of the existence of a significant association between the gender profile of non profit institutions and a variety of organizational features such as size, management style, market orientation and positioning, fund raising strategies and economic dimension, in order to highlight current asymmetries and conditions of discrimination still existing in the Italian non profit sector.