Gender equality index

In several EU Member States, a century has now passed since women won the right to vote in national elections, were elected to national parliaments or first held a ministerial position. Nevertheless, one hundred years on, Europe-wide data show that women are still under-represented in political decision-making at local, national and European levels. The Gender Equality Index developed by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) to measure gender gaps over time shows that although ‘power’ is the area where most progress has been made in the past 10 years, it is also the area where the gender gap remains widest. With a score of 100 equalling gender balance, Sweden is currently the only EU country to score over 90 on the ‘political power’ indicator, which is based on the share of women ministers, members of parliament and women in regional assemblies. Some Member States, such as Slovenia and France, have made major strides, but the fact that other countries’ scores have declined, some from an already low base, illustrates that increases in women’s political representation are not necessarily linear or self-evident