Gender Equality Index 2019. Work-life balance

Limited opportunities for women to influence social and cultural decision-making

Women’s representation in decision-making in research, media and sports is the highest of all sub-domains (58.2 points). It increased by 3.2 points in the 2 years from 2015, when data for this sub-domain was first introduced.

The change was mainly driven by the increase in women on boards of public broadcasters from 32 % in 2015 to 36 % in 2018. However, the share of women in the decision-making bodies of public research funding organisations in the EU stagnated at the 2015 level of 40 %, while their representation in this role in the 10 most popular Olympic sport federations stood at a lowly 16 % in 2018 (2 p.p. higher than in 2015).

The 12 EU Member States (AT, BG, DE, DK, FI, FR, IE, LU, LV, NL, SE, UK) already above the EU average in 2015 in sport not only increased the number of women in the highest decision-making bodies, they did so by greater numbers than Member States below the EU average. The average increase of higher-performing Member States in 2017 was more than 3 p.p., compared to 1 p.p. for lower-performing Member States.

Footnotes

[1] Refers to EIGE’s Gender statistics database, WMID data from the first quarterly update following the election date.

[2] Considering the 50-50 quota applied to two thirds of candidates in the proportional part. The remaining one third of MPs are elected in constituencies with majoritarian systems, and the quota is 40-60.

[3] Data collection in May-June 2018 identified 152 parties across the 28 EU Member States.

[4] EIGE’s Gender statistics database, WMID, November 2018.

[5] The share of women on boards in France first reached 40 % in October 2016, driven by a law introduced in 2011 that required all large companies (> 500 employees or a turnover of > EUR 50 million) to have ≥ 40 % of each gender on boards by January 2017.

[6] Austria and Portugal have not been included under the binding quotas group despite the fact that both have been enforcing legislative quotas since January 2018. The quotas are fairly recent and will take some time to show any impact. They are included instead under the soft measures.