Britain ranks alongside Slovakia and the Czech Republic in gender equality index as having made no progress in range of fields

Britain has made zero progress in tackling inequality between the sexes in the past decade and lags behind Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and France in the EU’s latest gender equality league table.



The UK joins Slovakia and the Czech Republic among the EU’s 28 member states in having made no significant advances in reducing levels of inequality when taking into account a range of fields including the workplace, income, education, health or political engagement.

Britain’s performance declined in the field of educational attainment between 2005 and 2015, according to the Gender Equality Index, although the country remains one the EU’s three best performers in that area.

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The UK results fit into a picture of slow progress towards gender equality across Europe between 2005 and 2015. The overall score for gender equality, when a matrix of data is taken into account, rose by just four points, to 66.2 out of 100, with 100 signifying complete gender equality.

The gender gap in employment in the EU is “wide and persistent”, the index report says, with the full-time equivalent (FTE) employment rate of 40% for women and 56% for men. Income gaps have narrowed, but on average women still earn 20% less than men, and the average masks huge disparities across the EU.



Only every third man in the EU engages daily in cooking and housework, compared with nearly eight in 10 women. Almost every second working woman spends an hour or more caring and educating children or grandchildren, elderly or disabled people during the day, compared with only about a third of working men.

The report says: “As the life course of women often involves economic inactivity, part-time work, unpaid work, lower wages and an average of five years’ shorter working life than men, they face a significant risk of poverty in old age. In the EU, 18% of women and 12% of men aged 75-plus are at risk of monetary poverty.”

In education, men still dominate the fields of science and technology (66%). Women represent about three-quarters of tertiary students in education (78%), health and welfare (71%), and humanities and the arts (65%).

The report says: “Segregation in educational choices leads to further gender divisions in the labour market and reinforces the undervaluation of work, skills and competencies traditionally attributed to women.”

It says gender equality in decision-making in political, economic and social areas is “progressing at the fastest rate, but continues to have the lowest score of all domains”.

The advances are sharpest in the corporate setting, where the proportion of women on the boards of the largest listed companies in the EU has more than doubled, from 10% in 2005 to 22% in 2015. However, women account for only 7% of board chairs and presidents and 6% of chief executives in the largest companies.

Vĕra Jourová, the commissioner in Brussels responsible for gender equality, described the results as “embarrassing” and vowed to publish an EU-wide action plan by November.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Vĕra Jourová described the results as ‘embarrassing’. Photograph: Francois Lenoir/Reuters

She said: “The numbers we see today tell a sad story. A story of stagnation, slow progress and prevailing gender inequality across Europe. We cannot think of our societies as modern when we let so many people down, every year and every day.

“This backwards or stagnating trend I find truly embarrassing. Equality is not about women becoming like men, but tapping the full potential of our society by creating an environment of choice.

“Women are discriminated against when it comes to their career paths and access to jobs. Men are discriminated against their private lives and put under huge pressure to focus on their career and making money.”

The top-scoring country in the EU is Sweden (82.6), followed by Denmark. Greece holds the lowest score (50). Hungary is the second-worst performer. The most improved country is Italy, up 12.9 points in the past 10 years to reach 14th out of 28.

Åsa Regnér, the minister for gender equality in Sweden, said the results in general were depressing.

She said: “Gender equality doesn’t happen automatically. It happens because of leadership, political decisions, because of the allocation of resource or not. It is because politicians fight in debate or not … This is all about political leadership. There are governments and leaders who don’t want gender equality.”

Joanna Maycock, the secretary general of the European Women’s Lobby, who is from the UK, said “critical action” was needed to deal with the issue, and the European commission’s promise of an action plan was not enough.

She said that among the necessary measures, all national governments should offer free childcare, examine their tax practices, review national budgets for gender disparities and apply legal measures to address the “shocking levels of discrimination” against women returning to work after having a baby.