Gender Equality in the EU
In honor of International Women’s Day, it is important to examine the ways that women’s roles are changing, or not, in the workplace, home, government, and society at large. The European Commission’s 2018 Report on Equality Between Men and Women in the EU offers some interesting insights.
Attitudes are changing, but not as quickly as we may think…..
84% of people surveyed believed that gender equality was important for them personally (including 80% of men) BUT…
- 35% believe that men are more ambitious than women
- 69% believe that women are more likely than men to make decisions based on their emotions
- 44% believe a woman’s most important role is to take care of her home and family (in 1/3 of EU Member States this increases to 70% or more)
- In couples with the youngest child under 7, women spend on average 32 hours per week on paid work but 39 hours on unpaid work, compared to men who do 41 hours paid and 19 hours of unpaid work per week
From the classroom to the workplace
Across the EU, women have better educational outcomes than men (44% of women aged 30-34 completed tertiary education, compared to 34% of men). Despite this, there is still, on average, a 16% wage gap between what men and women earn, with a pretty astonishing range, from a high of 25% for Estonia, to around 5% for Romania and Italy.
- 76% of women graduating with a STEM degree are able to find jobs in their fields, 10 points lower than male STEM graduates, and 3 points lower than women graduates in other fields
- Studies show that closing the gender gap in STEM would result in 2.2% – 3.0% increase in EU GDP per capita and would increase employment by 850,000 to 1,200,000 jobs by 2050
- 45% of women in the EU work in precarious jobs (those with low qualifications, irregular hours, and little job security) while for men this figure is 26%
Missing at the top
Although numbers have doubled in the last 20 years, only 23.6% of all members of parliament worldwide are women, with the situation only slightly better in the EU.
- 36% of the members of the European Parliament are women, with 9 Member States having at least 40% female ministers
- Women reaching cabinet-level positions tend to be assigned portfolios with a lower political priority. 40% of female senior officials were responsible for socio-cultural functions (health, education, social affairs), compared to just 19% of male cabinet members.
- While countries like France and Italy are implementing laws to achieve better balance in corporate boardrooms, in 14 countries men still outnumber women in the boards of large companies by at least 4 to 1
- Fewer than 1 in 10 companies have a female chair or CEO
Gender-based violence
- One in three women in Europe has experienced either physical and/or sexual violence since the age of 15
- 75% of women in qualified professions or top management jobs have been sexually harassed, as have 61% of women in the services sector
- An EU study found that online violence is not necessarily distinct from violence experienced in the ‘real world’, but is rather a continuum. For example, cyber stalking by a partner or ex-partner follows the same patterns as offline stalking and can be seen as intimate partner violence that is simply facilitated by technology
Still a long way way go
The European Commission’s report closed by noting that the overall score for gender equality in the EU is 66.2, but that figure has only increased by 4 points in the last 10 years.
Click here to check out the events in your city on 8 March in honor of International Women’s Day.