On 17 July 2026 Accredia, the Italian national accreditation body, announced the launch of accredited certification under UNI/PdR 180:2026, the reference practice (prassi di riferimento) with which bodies and administrations can assess the effects of policies, expenditure and investment programmes on gender equality; the rules for certification bodies are set out in technical circular DC No 26/2026, approved on 22 June 2026 (Accredia). The practice, in force since 10 February 2026 according to its catalogue entry (UNI), sits alongside UNI/PdR 125:2022, the reference document for gender equality certification in businesses. The two documents share an indicator-based approach, but differ in their object, in their accreditation scheme and in their relationship with the law.
Two practices, two objects: the company management system and the assessment of public spending
According to its catalogue entry, UNI/PdR 125:2022, in force since 16 March 2022, sets out guidelines on the management system for gender equality, based on a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) relating to equality policies in organisations (UNI).
UNI/PdR 180:2026 is designed instead “to guide Public Administrations (PA) in the prior and subsequent assessment of all policies, programmes, expenditure and investments in terms of their impact on women and men” (our translation), with reference to growth in female employment and to the promotion of businesses attentive to gender equality (UNI). The indicators are grouped into three macro-areas, which Accredia weights as follows: allocation of resources (40 points), award of contracts to implementing undertakings (30 points), direct actions of the public administration (30 points); certification requires at least 60% of the total score. The model may be applied by local authorities with more than 5,000 inhabitants, by territorial and non-territorial public bodies and by entities that are controlled, partly owned or implementing funded investment programmes. The assessment is carried out ex ante and ex post, and Accredia links it to gender budgeting, the strategy for allocating resources that also aims at gender equality (Accredia). The object of the first practice is the organisation as employer; the object of the second is public spending.
The legal basis: certification under Article 46-bis and the reference to UNI/PdR 125
Article 4 of Law No 162 of 5 November 2021 inserted into Legislative Decree No 198 of 11 April 2006 (Code of equal opportunities between men and women) Article 46-bis, which from 1 January 2022 establishes gender equality certification “in order to attest the policies and concrete measures adopted by employers to reduce the gender gap in relation to opportunities for growth within the company, equal pay for equal duties, policies for managing gender differences and maternity protection” (our translation) (Normattiva). Paragraph 2 refers to decrees of the President of the Council of Ministers the setting of the minimum parameters, “with particular reference to the remuneration paid, to opportunities for career progression and to the reconciliation of working and private life” (Normattiva).
The link with the practice is established by the decree of 29 April 2022 of the Minister for Equal Opportunities and the Family, adopted in implementation of Article 1(147) of Law No 234 of 30 December 2021 (Official Gazette No 152 of 1 July 2022). Article 1 provides that the minimum parameters “are those set out in Reference Practice UNI/PdR 125:2022”, “and subsequent amendments or additions”. Article 3 requires the employer to provide an annual report on the degree of alignment with the practice and allows company trade union representatives and equality advisers to report anomalies to the certification body, after the undertaking has been given a period “not exceeding one hundred and twenty days” to remove them (Official Gazette (Gazzetta Ufficiale)).
For UNI/PdR 180:2026 no comparable reference emerges from the sources consulted. The catalogue entry recalls the principles of Legislative Decree No 198/2006 and expresses the hope “that the competent Institutions provide for appropriate instruments, including of a legislative nature”, to collect and monitor data on the economic policies of administrations (UNI). The first practice is a statutory parameter, whereas the second remains, for the time being, a voluntary instrument.
Incentives and procurement: the effects the law attaches to certification
Article 5 of Law No 162/2021 provided, for 2022, an exemption from social security contributions for certified private companies, “to an extent not exceeding 1 per cent and up to a maximum of EUR 50,000 per year for each company”, and in paragraph 3 a points premium for access to aid measures; paragraph 6 allows the exemption to be extended to subsequent years by a specific legislative measure allocating funds (Normattiva). The allocation came with the Budget Law for 2022: Article 1(138) of Law No 234 of 30 December 2021 raised to EUR 52 million per year, from 2023, the endowment of the Fund for the support of gender pay equality, also earmarking it for certification under Article 46-bis “to which contribution benefits for the employer are connected” (Normattiva). Funding for the exemption is therefore not limited to individual years, but rests on a standing annual endowment: by message No 3804 of 16 December 2025, the National Social Security Institute (INPS) made available the “SGRAVIO PAR_GEN” form for private employers certified by 31 December 2025, with applications open until 30 April 2026 (INPS).
In the Public Contracts Code the rule is clearer. Article 108(7) of Legislative Decree No 36 of 31 March 2023, in the text in force since 6 November 2025, provides: “In order to promote gender equality, contracting authorities shall provide, in calls for tenders, notices and invitations, for the higher score to be awarded to undertakings for the adoption of policies aimed at achieving gender equality, as evidenced by possession of the gender equality certification” under Article 46-bis (Normattiva). For contracting authorities the higher score linked to certification is an obligation, not an option.
It is here, in our view, that the two practices meet: an undertaking certified under UNI/PdR 125 obtains the higher score in tenders, while an administration certified under UNI/PdR 180 is also assessed on the award of contracts to implementing undertakings. The public pages do not, however, describe the content of the individual indicators, and it therefore cannot be stated that UNI/PdR 180 measures the application of Article 108(7).
Accreditation and certification bodies: two different schemes
For UNI/PdR 125, Article 2 of the decree of 29 April 2022 entrusts certification to bodies accredited under Regulation (EC) No 765/2008, with accreditation issued “in accordance with standard UNI CEI EN ISO/IEC 17021-1 specifically for UNI/PdR 125:2022” (Official Gazette (Gazzetta Ufficiale)), the standard for bodies providing audit and certification of management systems (ISO). With the third edition of the FAQs drawn up with UNI, the Italian standardisation body (January 2026), Accredia specified that for accredited bodies “the interpretations of application provided by the document are to be regarded as prescriptive” (Accredia).
For UNI/PdR 180, by contrast, circular DC No 26/2026 requires accreditation under UNI CEI EN ISO/IEC 17065:2012, the standard for bodies certifying products, processes and services (ISO); the title of the circular indicates its object, the “certification of the process of gender impact assessment of investment programmes” (Accredia).
As to take-up, Accredia reports for September 2025 62 accredited bodies and 38,652 certified sites (Accredia); UNI, on 3 April 2026, indicated more than 12,000 certified organisations and 64 accredited bodies, on data from the Department for Equal Opportunities (UNI). The two series count different units, sites and organisations, and are not directly comparable.
Critical aspects: the nature of the practice, public-sector addressees and verification of the indicators
The first aspect concerns the nature of the document. UNI’s rules for reference practices, approved on 21 February 2022, describe them as “pre-normative documents”, “drawn up on the basis of a rapid process of sharing within a restricted working table”, in force for no more than five years, extendable by up to a further five, within which they are transformed into a standard or withdrawn (UNI). A reference practice is not a technical standard and does not share its consensus process. On 3 April 2026 UNI stated that UNI/PdR 125 “remains valid and applicable” for the coming years as well, pending “its possible transformation into a standard”, and collected contributions until 24 April 2026 (UNI); we have not found any published outcome. In our view, any transformation will make it necessary to verify whether the 2022 decree’s reference to “subsequent amendments or additions” also covers a standard.
The second aspect concerns public-sector addressees. The sources consulted attach no legal effect to UNI/PdR 180, and we consider that, without a statutory anchor, it risks counting as a reputational attestation rather than as an instrument for decisions on spending. The threshold indicated by Accredia, moreover, refers to the total score, and the public pages mention no minimum per macro-area. A threshold set only on the total would allow weak results in one area to be offset by high results in another.
The third aspect concerns the verification of the indicators. The object of certification, according to the title of the circular, is the assessment process, not its outcomes. Certifying the assessment process is not the same as certifying the reduction of the gap. For UNI/PdR 125 the 2022 decree provides for external scrutiny by trade union representatives and equality advisers; for UNI/PdR 180 the catalogue entry merely expresses the hope that the data be “available, accessible, verifiable and adequately visible”. The governance of gender-disaggregated data is also stressed in the recommendations to governments of the OECD Forum on gender equality on artificial intelligence in public services. For businesses, Legislative Decree No 96 of 7 May 2026 on pay transparency does not refer to certification, but Article 9(9) sets 7 June 2027 as the date of the first collection of data on the pay gap for employers with at least one hundred and fifty employees (Normattiva). In our view, those data may provide an external check on the pay component of certification.
Conclusions
For businesses, UNI/PdR 125:2022 remains the parameter set in implementation of Article 46-bis, with effects on the contribution exemption, aid measures and procurement. For administrations, UNI/PdR 180:2026 has offered, since July 2026, an accredited certification of the gender impact assessment process, which however lacks, in the sources consulted, a statutory anchor and public scrutiny of the data. In our view, administrations certified under UNI/PdR 180 would do well to publish indicators and results by macro-area, and certified undertakings subject to Legislative Decree No 96/2026 to align now the pay data of the certification with those of pay transparency.
Author: Valentina Grazia Sapuppo
