(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.
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.