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.