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Gender Equality – a European export

Mar 8, 2017 | News

(08 March 2017) – The Commission is marking International Women’s Day with the publication of a new report on equality between men and women, which shows that EU legislation, guidelines, actions and funding possibilities are supporting noticeable but uneven progress in EU Member States.

Commission
© European Commission

The 2017 Gender Equality report shows that women still face challenges in different areas:

• Women’s unemployment rate remains very high in southern countries in particular, compared to men’s unemployment rate.

• Women still earn on average 40% less than men on average in all EU countries and the gender pay gap in pensions is stable at 38%. At this rate of change, it would however take another century to close the overall gender earnings gap.

• The glass ceiling still exists with only four countries (France, Italy, Finland and Sweden) have at least 30% women in the boards of large companies.

• Women are still underrepresented in politics. In eight countries (Bulgaria, Greece, Croatia, Cyprus, Latvia, Hungary, Malta and Romania) women accounted for less than 20% of members.

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