Gender Equality Index Report - European Institute for Gender ...

Halfway towards equality
Equality between women and men is a fundamental value
of the European Union and is vital to its economic and social
growth. To reach the objectives set by the EU in the
Europe 2020 growth strategy; face current economic and
social challenges; secure social justice; and achieve smart
and sustainable development, gender equality has to be
included at the very centre of political debate in Europe.
Despite 50 years of policies and actions at European level,
Member States have not yet managed to overcome gender
gaps, thus there is a need for further efforts.
Policy improvement cannot bear fruit without systematic
and consistent measurement of gender gaps at EU and
Member States level. The process began when the European
Commission proposed to introduce an assessment tool
on gender equality in the Roadmap for Equality between
Women and Men 2006–2010, and subsequently included
it in the Action Plan of its Strategy for Equality between
Women and Men 2010–2015. The creation of the assessment
tool was undertaken by the European Institute for
Gender Equality (EIGE) since the start of its operations, in
June 2010.
This report is a result of the Institute’s work of the past
three years, which presents a synthetic measure of gender
equality – the Gender Equality Index. I am proud to say
that it is the only index that gives a comprehensive map of
gender gaps in the EU and across Member States based on
the EU policy framework.
The Gender Equality Index relies on a trustworthy statistical
methodology. In spite of the scarcity of data, stringent
criteria are applied to the gender indicators, requiring that
variables are available and comparable across all Member
States. The computation of the Gender Equality Index
avoided subjective decisions in the way a weighting and
aggregation method for the Index was selected. The process
relied on a computation of more than 3,000 alternatives
in order to choose the best and most robust Index.
In the report, scores for each Member State and an EU
average are presented to enable a detailed assessment of
how close the EU and Member States have come towards
achieving gender equality in each of the critical domains
and within the EU policy agenda. It is also evident that
gender equality is correlated more with social indicators
such as public expenditure on education and research,
rather than with traditional economic indicators such as
GDP. With an average score of 54.0, (where 1 stands for
absolute gender inequality and 100 for full gender
equality), the European Union is only halfway towards a
gender equal society.
The results obtained show that the domain of power highlights
the biggest gender gaps, with an average score of
only 38.0 at EU level. The wide differences in the proportion
of women and men in decision-making across the
EU-27 is a strong call for the improvement of policy and
decisive action, such as the introduction of quota systems,
initiated by the European Commission in 2012. The domain
of time is marked by wide differences between women
and men when it comes to time spent on unpaid caring
and domestic activities. This is the second domain where
the widest gender gaps can be observed, with an average
score of 38.8 at the EU level.
The Institute foresees regular updates of this first Gender
Equality Index, which is specifically tailored towards the EU’s
needs in a present policy context and hopes to offer EU
policy makers a reliable tool in assessing the progress and
effectiveness of policies and initiatives aimed at improving
gender equality in general and specific policy areas.
On behalf of the Institute and its team, I would like to
thank all institutions and experts who contributed to the
creation of the Gender Equality Index, and especially to
the European Commission: Directorate-General for Justice;
Joint Research Centre; Eurofound; International Labour
Organisation; European Women’s Lobby; EIGE’s Management
Board; Experts’ Forum; Working Group on the Gender
Equality Index; and my colleagues at EIGE. We firmly
believe that the Index will give impetus for broader debate
on the challenges of gender equality, and will contribute
to making equality between women and men in Europe
a reality for all.
Virginija Langbakk,
Director
The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE)
Gender Equality Index – Report
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