On the occasion of this year's International Women's Day, the Commission has published its 2019 report on equality between women and men in the EU.
The report shows some progress in gender equality, but women still continue to face inequalities in many areas:
- The EU employment rate for women reached an all-time high of 66.4 % in 2017, but the situation differs across Member States. Last year, eight Member States received recommendations under the European Semester framework to improve female participation in the labour market (Austria, Czechia, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Italy, Poland, and Slovakia).
- Women are more at risk of poverty, with salaries on average 16% lower than for men. This translates in the pension gap, which stood at 35.7 % in 2017. In some countries, more than 10 % of older women cannot afford necessary health care.
- Women remain largely under-represented in Parliaments and government. Only 6 of the 28 national parliaments across the EU are led by a woman and seven out of ten members of national parliaments in the EU are men. While the current level of 30.5 % female senior Ministers is the highest since data were first available for all EU Member States in 2004, there is still evidence suggesting that women tend to be allocated portfolios considered to have lower political priority.
- The glass-ceiling remains a reality in the business world with only 6.3 % of CEO positions in major publicly listed companies in the EU held by women.
Other pieces of information:
- Public consultation on equal pay – open until 5 April 2019
- Call for proposals to prevent and combat gender-based violence and violence against children, youth people and women – open until 13 June 2019
- Statement by the European Commission on the occasion of International Women's Day 2019.
- Also today, as part of the Women in Digital programme, the Commission is organising the second Women in Cyber event to raise awareness about the need of women in cybersecurity.
- Eurostat data on the gender employment gap is available here, on women in managerial positions here, and statistics on women in national parliaments and governments here.
- Today or tomorrow, the European Commission will launch a public consultation on the gender strategy – in order to take stock of the Strategic engagement for gender equality 2016 -2019 and to evaluate priorities for the next gender strategy to be adopted under the new Commission.
- The Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU and EIGE are organising an event entitled "Born to be LEADERS", 7th of March 2019.
- EP inter parliamentary conference with national MPs - 7 March - http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/femm/2019.htm