Although some European member states rank among the best in the world for equality, significant disparities remain within the bloc.
As the world marks International Women’s Day, warnings of global backsliding in gender equality are growing. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has alerted that women’s rights are under pressure worldwide: the 2024 SDG Gender Index shows that nearly 40 per cent of countries have stagnated or regressed since 2019. Yet the World Bank estimates that closing gender gaps in employment could boost global output by up to 20 per cent.
But how does Europe compare in this global context?
Across the European Union, the picture is more nuanced. While some member states score highly on composite equality indicators, significant disparities persist in pay levels and the distribution of unpaid care work. This reveals how structural inequalities continue to shape women’s economic and social position across Europe.
Overall equality in EU
The 2025 Gender Equality Index proves that many in the EU still hold outdated views: women as caregivers, men as better leaders, and controlling partner as acceptable. The index shows a picture of how far member states have progressed toward gender equality, and where gaps remain most entrenched, by scoring countries from 0 (inequality) to 100 (full equality) across key life domains. It is a composite measure, built from multiple indicators across key areas, such as work, money, knowledge, time, power and health.
The EU average is 63.4 out of 100, indicating there is still considerable distance to full equality. Scores vary widely between member states — from below 50 in some to mid-70s in others.
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Overall, the EU average score of 63.4 out of 100 reflects some progress since previous years. However, disparities between European countries are significant, showing the uneven progress across Europe when it comes to gender equality.
Countries in Northern and Western Europe tend to have the highest scores in the index. For example, Sweden leads the EU ranking, followed by Netherlands and Denmark, indicating relatively stronger gender equality outcomes.
Meanwhile, countries such as Poland and Cyprus score well below the EU average, reflecting larger gender gaps in domains like work, money, power and time
Full gender equality remains decades away: without reinforced action, it would take another 60 years to achieve. This is why, in its 2025 roadmap for women’s rights, the European Commission calls on to member states to pledge their engagement into promoting a gender-equal society, and to cooperate more closely and allocate sufficient funding to improve progress in this area.
Wide pay equality disparities
According to the Gender Equality Index, women across the EU earn just 77 per cent of what men earn annually. This means they must work an average of 15 months and 18 days to earn the same as men in a year.
In 2024 in the European Union, women’s gross hourly earnings were, on average, 11.1 per cent less than those of men. This is the lowest gender pay gap on record across the bloc. Women earned about 89 cents for every euro that men made per hour, up from around 84 cents a decade ago.
There is, however, considerable variation between EU member states.
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Across EU countries, the gender pay gap varied by 19.6 percentage points, ranging from minus -0.8 per cent in Luxembourg to 18.8 per cent in Estonia. This means that, in 2024, Luxembourg was the only EU country where, on average, men earned less than women, without taking into account the differences in the characteristics of employed men and women. Belgium, but also Romania, and Italy reported the smallest wage gaps, suggesting that the difference in average hourly earnings between women and men is comparatively small in these labour markets.
At the other end of the scale, Estonia, Austria, and Germany recorded some of the largest gaps in 2024, often exceeding 18–20 per cent. In these countries, women earn roughly one-fifth less per hour on average than men.
This also suggests that a high GDP does not necessarily lead to greater gender equality.
Does equality stop at home?
Wages are only one part of the equation. Hidden behind income statistics lies another imbalance: the unequal distribution of unpaid care work.
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As countries face increasing pressure to provide care services, unpaid caregivers make an invaluable contribution. According to Eurofond, nearly half of the EU’s population provides unpaid care. Ten per cent of people juggle multiple care responsibilities simultaneously.
Women are more likely than men to provide unpaid care. They are especially likely to provide care intensively, and to juggle multiple caregiving roles.
Eurofound notes that there are persistent gender disparities, with 48 per cent of women providing unpaid care compared to 42 per cent of men. So, although income gaps may have narrowed over the past decade, gender differences in unpaid care remain evident across most countries.
While the EU is moving forward towards gender equality, albeit unevenly and perhaps not always in the areas that matter most. If it wants to meet its ambitions, closing the pay gap and redistributing care responsibilities may prove just as important as improving headline equality scores.
- Author: Maria Markus, Euranet Plus News Agency
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