EUROPEAN REVIEW

ISSUE 34 - Page 9

For International Women’s Day this year the EU’s statistics arm, Eurostat, published a detailed report covering topics such as life expectancy, higher education, employment, pay and management posts as well as well domestic work and leisure time. In general women live for about six years longer than men despite working for up to an hour a day more, if domestic chores are taken into account. However, although there are more women than men in higher education in all EU States except Germany and Cyprus, they are more likely to be unemployed. On average  female employment rates were 15% lower varying from 71% in Denmark to a measly 34% in Malta. Women’s jobs are much more likely to be part time while men have far more chance of being managers. Over the whole EU about a third of working women are part-timers compared to only 7% of men and a third of all managers are female. Outside work women have less free time and are expected to carry out food preparation and cleaning while men concentrate on construction, repairs and gardening.

                         

Member State		% of women amongst higher education students 2003	% Employment Rate 2005		% of managers who were female 2005	Gender Pay Gap (% difference between female and male pay rates) 2004	Part-time employment as % of total employment 2005
			Women	Men			Women	Men
EU25		54.6	56.3	71.2	32.1	15	32.6	7.3
Austria		53.0	61.7	75.1	27.0	18	38.7	5.9
Belgium		53.3	54.1	67.7	32.9	6	40.7	7.1
Cyprus		49.5	58.5	79.5	13.6	25	13.8	5.1
Czech Rep.		50.7	56.0	73.3	30.3	19	8.4	2.1
Denmark		57.9	70.8	80.1	23.0	17	32.7	12.8
Estonia		61.5	63.5	66.5	37.5	24	10.4	4.9
Finland		53.5	67.4	71.0	29.7	20	18.5	9.1
France		55.0	57.9	69.0	37.1	12	30.9	5.7
Germany		49.5	59.3	71.1	26.4	23	44.3	7.7
Greece		51.0	46.2	74.5	25.8	10	9.1	2.1
Hungary		56.7	50.9	63.0	34.3	11	6.1	2.9
Ireland		55.7	58.0	76.2	30.2	11	24.4	5.0
Italy		56.2	45.4	70.2	31.9	7	25.7	4.5
Latvia		61.7	59.4	66.9	44.3	15	11.6	7.6
Lithuania		60.0	59.2	66.3	42.7	16	8.5	4.6
Luxembourg		53.3	50.6	72.4	26.3	14	40.2	2.4
Malta		56.9	33.6	73.5	14.5	4	19.3	4.7
Netherlands		51.0	66.4	79.9	25.6	19	75.3	22.6
Poland		57.8	46.4	58.2	32.5	10	14.2	7.7
Portugal		56.6	61.9	73.4	34.2	5	16.6	7.1
Slovakia		53.1	50.8	64.1	31.2	24	3.9	1.2
Slovenia		56.2	61.7	70.8	32.8	9	11.0	7.1
Spain		53.1	51.2	75.0	32.3	15	24.9	4.7
Sweden		59.6	70.5	74.6	29.8	17	39.9	11.8
UK		55.9	65.8	77.3	34.5	22	43.1	10.6