In 2025, women in the EU must work an average of 15 months and 18 days to earn the same as men, according to the latest report by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE). The figure highlights the persistent disparities captured in this year’s index, despite years of EU-level initiatives aimed at closing gender gaps in pay, care, leadership and education.
Alongside the new data, an independent review of the EU’s 2020–2025 Gender Equality Strategy finds that recent policy efforts have not translated into the scale of change envisioned.
“Stronger and deeper approaches and policies are needed,” Cristina Castellanos, co-author of the review and economist at the National University of Remote Education (UNED), told The Parliament. “Even if many initiatives were carried out, the current policies are not enough.”
As the EU prepares its next five-year strategy, analysts warn that progress will remain incremental unless the bloc tackles the underlying drivers, including unequal distribution of unpaid care, gender-segregated labour markets and the failure to engage men and boys in equality efforts.
The EU’s gender agenda falls short
During her first term, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promoted a broad agenda of initiatives to remove barriers for women and girls across the bloc. Yet the strategy has done relatively little to engage men and boys, a gap that experts say weakens its overall impact.
Castellanos points in particular to unequal division of unpaid care work, which continues to restrict women’s participation in the labour market and contributes to long-term financial insecurity.
“We need equal, non-transferable, fully paid leave for both men and women” she said. Castellanos added it should be complemented by universal and affordable childcare, accessible long-term care services and shorter working hours that don’t compromise salaries.
The current imbalances compound over the life course. Lower earnings and reduced labour-market participation widen the gender pension gap — currently at 29% — and expose elderly women to a higher risk of poverty.
According to EIGE, women in the EU earn on average 77% of men’s annual income. Within couples, the gap is even more pronounced, with women earning 30% less than their partners.
Labour markets across the EU still reflect outdated assumptions about gender roles, Danish-Swedish human rights activist Emma Holten told The Parliament.
“We need workplaces to encourage men's inclusion in caring for the family and children. Both men and women work and care in different ways, and it is time for the labour market to make space for that,” said Holten, author of “Deficit: How Feminist Economics Can Change Our World.”
Despite rising employment rates among women over the past decade, it hasn’t translated into meaningful gains in workplace equality.
“They are still largely confined to ‘jobs for women’ with poorer working conditions,” the report states, urging stronger efforts to challenge gender stereotypes and remove tax-related disincentives for women’s employment.
Only 35% of managers in the EU are women, and many remain concentrated in lower-paid sectors such as education, health and social work.
Uneven gender progress across the bloc
At the current pace of change, the EU will need at least 50 more years to achieve full gender equality, EIGE’s estimates.
“Europe has inched forward, but far too slowly,” EIGE director Carlien Scheele told reporters on Tuesday.
Cyprus, Hungary and the Czech Republic recorded the lowest overall scores across the index’s six domains: money, work, power, health, time and knowledge.
At the other end of the scale, Sweden, Denmark and France lead with scores between 71.8 to 73.7 out of 100. The EU average stands at 63.4, but it masks substantial differences between countries and policy areas.
“It's worrying that progress is so uneven across the EU,” European Commissioner for Equality Hadja Lahbib told the audience at EIGE’s one-day conference in Brussels. “Our women and girls should find equality wherever they go in our Union.”
However, some analysts caution against relying too heavily on the index’s long-term projection.
The narrative of “50 years to equality” is misleading, said Michał Gulczyński, fellow at the European University Institute.
“If we look at the specific dimensions, we can see that some trends actually point in the opposite direction: more inequality, not less,” he told The Parliament.
According to the index, which also measures men’s disadvantages, gender gaps in education have been widening across most member states since 2010. Boys’ lower reading skills, segregation between vocational and academic tracks and lower tertiary-education attainment all contribute to this pattern, Gulczyński said, arguing that men’s challenges must also be considered in the EU’s quest for equality.
Next steps for European equality
The European Commission is drafting its next Gender Equality Strategy through 2030, expected to include measures addressing violence against women, the gender pay gap and working conditions. The proposal is due in March 2026.
In recent years, Brussels has introduced a slew of legislation to improve gender equality across the bloc, but for Joanna Scheuring-Wielgus (S&D/Poland), a member of the European Parliament’s women’s rights committee, legislation alone is not enough.
“We also need a society that understands gender, sexuality, and how it’s all intertwined with human rights,” she told The Parliament.
She argues that the next crucial step is fully gender mainstreaming across all EU policies — systematically assessing how every initiative or budget line affects women and men.
“The sooner we realize it, the sooner we will have a true union of equality,” she said.
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