Latvia has EU's highest proportion of women in top jobs

  • 2015-03-07
  • from wire reports and TBT staff, RIGA

The proportion of top jobs held by women is higher in Latvia than in any other country in the EU, according to Eurostat. In the Baltic country, 44 percent of the best jobs are taken by women, the latest survey found.

Hungary had the second highest proportion (41 percent), followed by Lithuania where 40 percent.

The country where the lowest proportion of top jobs areheld by women is Luxembourg (16 percent), followed by Cyprus (19 percent), and the Netherlands and Croatia (both 25 percent).

The European Union average is 33 percent.

However, the survey also found that a pay gap remains between men and women in Latvia. The hourly earnings for women in Latvia are on average 14.4 percent less than what men earn, according to ''Eurostat''.

This means that the gender pay gap in Latvia is the 12th lowest in the EU.

The smallest gender pay gap in the EU is in Slovenia, where women earn on average 3.2 percent less then men, followed by Malta (5.2 percent), and Poland (6.4 percent).

Meanwhile, the largest pay gap between men and women is in Estonia, where men earn, on average, 29.9 percent more than women.

Austria has the second highest gender pay gap (23 percent), followed by the Czech Republic (22.1 percent). In Lithuania, women on average received 13.3 percent less than men. The EU average pay gap is 16.4 percent.