Despite progress across Europe, full gender equality remains at least 50 years away, according to EIGE’s 2025 Gender Equality Index which introduces new indicators and a renewed pace of change…
Other key findings from the Index include:
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The EU Gender Equality Index score for 2025 is 63.4 out of 100
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Progress is uneven, ranging from 47.6 (Cyprus) to 73.7 (Sweden)
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Impressive gains in economic decision-making result from ambitious legislation
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Most Member States have seen gender equality setbacks in health and education
The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) can today reveal that women across the EU earn just 77% of what men earn annually. This means they must work on average 15 months and 18 days to take home the same as men in a year.
This shocking earnings gap between women and men is exposed by EIGE’s Gender Equality Index 2025. The annual report, which tracks Europe’s progress towards full equality, gives the EU an overall score of 63.4 out of 100.
While that’s up 10.5 points since 2010, at the current and renewed pace, it means we are still a half-century away from full gender equality.
“Put simply, women are working the equivalent of an entire ‘ghost quarter’ for free. Those three months and 18 days that are lost to the earnings gap each year are unfair. They’re a brake on equality and competitiveness for all of Europe,” says EIGE Director, Carlien Scheele.
The “ghost quarter” economics outlined in the report matter because those lost months represent time not spent with family, studying, training or resting. And it compounds across pensions and lifetime income.
The Index tracks progress across the six domains of work, money, knowledge, time, power and health, ranking performance on a scale of 0 to 100 (which means full gender equality). It also monitors violence against women and intersecting inequalities, taking into account multiple life factors such as age, sexual orientation, disability or a migrant background.
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Work: The Index shows women’s employment is growing, but few reach managerial, ICT or higher-paid roles. And, while parenthood advances men’s career prospects, it restricts them for women.
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Money: Women earn 77% of men’s annual earnings (up from 69% in 2015), while women in couples earn on average 30% less than their partners.
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Knowledge: Young women outperform men in higher education but are steered into ‘caring professions like education, health or social work which are typically undervalued, leading to limited opportunities in leadership and pay.
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Time: Women continue to shoulder most unpaid care and housework, limiting their engagement in leisure and public life.
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Power: This measure of gender equality in decision-making across politics, economics and society, has been the main driver of progress in the Index since 2020. Yet, despite these gains, it is still the lowest scoring domain (40.5) due to persistent inequalities.
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Health: While this is the highest domain score (86.2), progress has stagnated, and inequalities persist as far as health behaviours and the amount of healthy life years especially for women with low education. Here, we see men falling behind in engaging in healthy behaviours such as smoking and drinking.
The Index also finds that violence against women remains pervasive and under-reported with data pointing to an alarming 31% of women experiencing physical and/or sexual violence in their adult lives -with higher exposure among women under 45.
“Europe has inched forward, but far too slowly. The Index shows more women are in work, yet not enough in the jobs that pay well nor at the top tables where budgets are set,” says Carlien Scheele.
“We need to make equal pay a reality, build care systems that are not just about freeing up women’s time but sharing the load equally with their partners. And setting leadership targets that turn women’s potential into power. This is how we move from progress on paper to gender equality in people’s lives.”
Download the Gender Equality Index 2025 to see how your country performs, inform national policy and accelerate reforms in pay, care, leadership and violence prevention.
Methodology update
For this latest edition, the Index has had its first major upgrade since 2013. Taking into account emerging issues in an ever-evolving context, policy priorities are shifting with a greater focus on the impact of digitalisation on our lives and the importance of work-life balance. This includes updated indicators and new data sources and a stronger focus on individual (not only household) data.
This means it offers sharper coverage of today’s gender gaps. EIGE applied the new methodology to the Gender Equality Index from previous years so trends can be tracked over time. The Agency fine-tuned the Index for 2025 following consultations with 125 experts and more than 20 stakeholder meetings.
