TALLINN - In 2022, the gender employment gap for men and women aged 20-64 in the European Union was 10.7 percentage points, 0.2 points lower than the previous year, however, in Estonia, the gap was significantly smaller, at just 2.9 points.
Within the EU, only two regions had higher employment rates for women than men last year -- the capital region of Lithuania, and Southern Finland, according to Eurostat. In all the other EU regions, the gender gap persisted with higher rates of employment for men.
In 2019, the EU set a goal to halve the gender gap by 2030. One in five EU regions has already met the target set at 5.8 pp. 14 of these regions are in France, seven Germany, five in Finland, four each in Sweden and Portugal. In the Baltic States and Finland, the employment gap was less than 5.8 points on a national level.
The highest gender employment gaps were recorded in the region of Central Greece at 31.4 pp and the southern Italian region of Puglia at 30.7 pp.
A variety of reasons cause gender disparities in employment, such as unpaid care responsibilities of women, hiring discrimination, and scarcity of women in leadership. Additionally, factors like inadequate childcare, tax disincentives, and occupational segregation contribute to enduring gender employment gaps.
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