Gender Equality Index 2019: Work-life balance

Women still dominate part-time employment, consigning them to jobs with poorer career progression. No steady narrowing of the gender gap in FTE employment (which is at 16 p.p.) has been noted nationally in recent years, whereas it even widened (by at least 1 p.p.) in, for example, Denmark, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands and Slovenia. This means that the goal of the Eur­ope 2020 strategy to reach a 75 % employment rate for women and men alike remains elusive, due strictly to women’s particularly vulnerable access to jobs. While women’s employment rate in 2018 was just above 67 %, the 79 % rate for men had already surpassed the EU goal. In all EU Member States, men dominate specific fields such as engineering and technology, but are under-represented in others, such as teaching and care work. Women’s disproportionate responsibility for care of dependent family members and household tasks is a major factor of gender segregation in employment. The situation requires much wider and more explicit recognition of gender inequalities as a major barrier to achieving the EU employment target in the future and setting up gender-sensitive targets in the assessment of policy effectiveness.

Motherhood, lower upskilling and reskilling opportunities and a migration background remain particular barriers to accessing and progressing in jobs for women, especially among those with a low level of education. Being a parent continues to hinder women, but not men, in the labour market. The largest gender gap in the FTE employment rates is noted in couples with children. The gap is 60 % for women, whereas it reaches as high as 88 % for men. Though the work—life balance directive makes a bold and necessary step in recognising the need to, as well as instigating conditions to, better support women’s access to paid work, more needs to be done. For example, boosting equal opportunities to participate in and benefit from continuous training and retraining and more gender-balanced opportunities of using transport and other public infrastructure are needed, not the least to create more gender-equal access to employment. A better gender balance as regards access to paid work and working intensity could be achieved via a better access to and take-up of FWAs, especially if taken up by men. This underlines the role of men in freeing up women’s time resources and thus their wider opportunities outside the home sphere, boosting gender equality in employment as well as social and economic well-being for all.

Persistent gender inequalities in pay still reflect the price paid for motherhood, and are closely linked to the gendered distribution of care responsibilities within families. This points to further efforts being needed to generally increase society’s awareness of the existence and roots of gender inequalities in pay and of the ways to minimise and even counteract their potential occurrence. For this, the consistent and simultaneous application of organisational and pol­icy-level measures, including those listed in the EU action plan 2017-2019 — tackling the gender pay gap, is of utmost importance.

In addition, the complexity of the gender gaps in pay requires moving away from partial or simplistic descriptions of the phenomenon, which often offer too narrow or incomplete comprehension and thus insufficient capacity to address it (EIGE, 2019c). For example, in addition to the reduction of the gender pay gap, which displays gender gaps in hourly pay, more attention should be paid to narrowing gender gaps in annual earnings, which account for differences in employment intensity and overall labour-market participation. Furthermore, more regular monitoring of gender gaps in pay and the income situation among people from more vulnerable backgrounds, such as migrant, Roma or older women, is needed and would provide a better basis for improved policy responses.

Analysis in the domain of money also stresses the need for long-term policy evaluations. For example, lifetime pay inequalities fall on older women, pointing to the need for gender-sensi­tive and forward-looking evaluation not only of national employment policies, but also of social-protection systems. The gender gap in pensions in the EU stands at 39 %, and the gender gap in poverty to the disadvantage of women is at its highest among those aged 75 and over. This shows the limited effectiveness of current public-policy settings in reducing gendered barriers to equal economic and financial resources throughout people’s lives. It also asks for more comprehensive evaluation and consistency of various policy settings and their reforms in order to ensure the equal economic independence of women and men.

Young women (aged 30-34) have already reached the Europe 2020 target (46 % have graduated from tertiary education), but the share of men tertiary graduates has yet to reach it. Moreover, the gender gap in educational attainment among the younger generation has been widening to the detriment of men, and reached 10 p.p. in 2016. Further challenges are faced by women and men with disabilities and by people from deprived socioeconomic backgrounds, highlighting the importance of access to high-quality inclusive education, as aimed for in the European Pillar of Social Rights.

Although more women and men graduate from universities than in the past, gender segregation in education remains a major barrier to gender equality in the EU. In 2017, 43 % of all women at university were studying education, health and welfare, humanities and arts, with the gender gap in the EU as a whole at 22 p.p., remaining unchanged since 2005. Such a divide is mirrored by gender segregation in the labour market, determining women’s and men’s earnings, career prospects and working conditions.

The majority of Member States lag far behind the European cooperation in education and training (ET 2020) benchmark of 15 % of adults engaged in lifelong learning, with the EU-28 average stagnating at 11 % (12 % for women and 10 % for men in 2017). Adult learning stalls most when reskilling needs are greatest. Participation in lifelong learning is particularly low among the population groups who could most benefit from it — older or low-skilled adults working in precarious or fragmented work situations. A highly skilled and mobile working population is crucial for Europe’s prosperity, therefore participation in lifelong learning will continue to be high on the EU policy agenda.

Participation in education and training played an important role in the Europe 2020 flagship initiative, ‘An agenda for new skills and jobs’, and was also at the centre Member State-specific recommendations in 2018 and 2019. Moreover, the Commission, in its communication on strengthening European identity through education and culture, proposed to establish an ambitious new benchmark for participation in lifelong learning — 25 % by 2025.

Although continuous learning throughout life is essential, finding time to maintain and increase skills and knowledge is challenging. Edu­cation and training is increasingly becoming a cornerstone of work—life balance. Member States with higher participation rates in adult formal and non-formal education displayed more gender-balanced time share for caring and higher-gender equality achievements in the domain of work.

The most recent available data shows that there is an uneven impact of family life on women and men. Women are engaged disproportionally more in unpaid care work, but even more strikingly in other domestic tasks. Only 34 % of men are engaged in cooking and housework every day for 1 hour or more in comparison with 79 % of women, with the situ­ation barely changing in more than a decade.

Gender inequalities in unpaid domestic work are highest between women and men who live in a couple and have children. Women and men with disabilities need care, but they are also carers. The Gender Equality Index shows 29 % of women and 20 % of men with disabilities in the EU doing care work every day. A bigger share of women with disabilities (79%) are cooking and/or doing other housework compared to men with disabilities (41%). Women and men in pre-retirement age also often step in to provide care to their grandchildren, allowing parents to work while their own employment suffers. Time use by women and men is heavily influenced by other social and cultural factors, but also by available work—life balance policies, public services and infrastructures.

A framework for tackling work—life balance and the ‘care penalty’ is established by both the European Pillar of Social Rights and the EU action plan on tackling the gender pay gap. More specific action is being taken through the direct­ive on work—life balance for parents and carers, adopted by the Council of the European Union in June 2019.

The lack of formal care services impacts women as informal carers disproportionately when compared to men, both during their working age and beyond it. Gender inequal­ities in time spent on informal caring are being debated in EU policy circles as a challenge of work—life balance. It is recognised that the disproportionate amount of time spent on unpaid care work and housework impacts women’s participation in employment and opportunities for social, personal and civic activities. It re­inforces gender segregation in education and in the labour market. It also affects women’s employment patterns and career prospects by exacerbating their involvement in precarious employment and by reinforcing the gender gap in pay and pensions.

The thematic focus of the 2019 Index on work—life balance confirms that gender equality in general, but particularly in the domain of time, is strongly interlinked with many aspects of work—life balance.

Work—life balance policies such as childcare and LTC services and FWAs therefore enhance gender equality. The Gender Equality Index scores are higher in the Member States where formal childcare and LTC arrangements are more widely available. More concluding remarks on formal and informal care are presented in the subsequent chapter on work—life balance.

Continued lack of gender parity is a fundamental concern for democracy. In 2018 the proportion of women in national parliaments (single/lower house) across the EU Member States reached an all-time high of 30 % but that still means that seven in ten members of parliaments are men. Fewer than one in five major political parties in the EU (18 %) has a woman leader, though there is better representation among deputy leaders (34 % women). In national governments, women account for just three in ten (31 %) senior ministers (members of the cabinet or equivalent) and are twice as likely to be given less conspicuous sociocultural portfolios (i.e. health, education and social affairs) as men.

The share of women on the boards of large companies across the EU more than doubled between 2010 and 2018 (from 12 % to 26 %), when the European Commission brought the issue to the fore, but progress has been concentrated in just a few Member States where governments have either taken or considered legislative action and/or had an intensive public debate on the issue. Elsewhere there has been little improvement, and now that the main drivers of progress have reached or are close to their national targets, progress at EU level has slowed down.

The increased level of female representation in boardrooms is not feeding through to the executive hierarchy. In 2018 women accounted for just 17 % of senior executives compared to 29 % of non-executives. Less than a quarter (24 %) of the largest companies in the EU Member States have at least 40 % of each gender among non-executives, and more than one in five (21 %) have no women non-executives at all. Although the number of women on corporate boards has more than doubled since 2010, the top positions are still largely occupied by men — women account for just 7 % of board chairs and 7 % of CEOs.

Data on decision-making in research-funding organisations indicates that women’s opportunities to influence the research agenda and ensure equal access to funding for both women and men are limited. Men dominate the highest decision-making positions in the main research-funding organisations across the EU. In this respect, the gender-balance targets for advisory groups (50 %) and evaluation panels (40 %) of the Horizon 2020 framework programme for research and innovation are highly relevant.

The proportion of women involved in top-level decision-making in media organisations is also low, although women’s employment in the media sector has been gradually increasing over the course of two decades. Women occupy 36 % of top decision-making positions in public broadcasting organisations across the EU. The Council acknowledged that media has an enormous capacity to contribute positively to the achievement of gender equality at all levels, and has confirmed its commitment to advancing women’s roles in decision-making in the media (Council of the European Union, 2013).

Although women’s participation in sports is increasing, women are frequently absent from sports decision-making bodies. On average in the EU-28 women make up 16 % of decision-making positions in the most popular sports federations in Europe (2 p.p. higher than in 2015). Several international and continental federations in Europe, responsible for the promotion and development of sports, have already shown a commitment to gender equality by introducing gender quotas. At the national level, initiatives to set up voluntary targets for gender balance in the governing structures of sports federations are concentrated in just a few Member States, which also have a higher level of women’s representation in top decision-making positions.

Women live longer than men but spend more of their life in poorer health. In most EU Member States, the number of years that women and men can expect to live in good health has increased by 2.8 for women and 3.6  for men since 2005, and an extra 9 months for both women and men since 2015. Despite improving health conditions and increasing life expectancy, clear gendered challenges remain regarding inequalities in health in the EU. While early and preventable deaths are one of the main concerns for men, women live longer but spend a greater share of their life in ill health. In 2016, women spent 20 years of their life in poor health in the EU compared to 16 years for men. Accordingly, a gender-specific approach to the health-related challenges faced by women and men could effectively contribute to reducing gender gaps, especially in light of ageing populations, a diminishing workforce and increasing pressure on welfare systems.

Disadvantaged groups of women and men in the EU still face greater unmet needs for healthcare services. The high scores in the sub-domain of access to healthcare in all Member States reflect continuous efforts to achieve access to adequate healthcare services in the EU. However, certain groups of women and men experience more difficulty in accessing the health support they need. In the EU, lone mothers (6 %) and fathers (8 %), as well as women (8 %) and men (7 %) with disabilities, are more likely to have unmet needs. Also, despite higher mortality rates for infections and diseases related to poor living conditions, migrants and refugees experience unequal access to preventive healthcare in a large majority of Member States. The Roma population also face major obstacles in meeting their needs in terms of health, especially with access to sexual and reproductive health services for Roma women.

In this context, administrative data collected through the reporting and recording proced­ures of institutions such as the police, prosecutors’ offices or the courts, is a key source of information that can help understand the scale of violence against women in the EU (EIGE, 2019b). Drawing from the victims’ rights directive and the Istanbul Convention’s minimum requirements for data provision, EIGE has developed a set of 13 indicators, seven of which are part of the measurement framework of the domain of violence, to be populated by the police and justice sectors to help Member States in collecting comprehensive and uniform data on rape, femicide and intimate partner violence. Further efforts need to be invested in measuring other severe forms of violence, such as psychological violence and forced marriage.

In light of the current backlash against gender equality and women’s rights in the EU, the rati­fication and full implementation of the Istanbul Convention by the EU and all of its Member States are needed more than ever to facilitate the development and monitoring of effective strategies and policies to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against women.

About one in ten employed women and men are not entitled to parental leave because the Member States have established restrictive eligibility rules. Without job protection they would lose their jobs if they wanted or needed to have time off from their paid work to care for their children beyond maternity and paternity leave. Since it is still generally women who take care of children, such restrictions have major consequences for gender equality. Indeed, the scores in the domains of work and of time are higher in the Member States where the eligibility rate for par­ental leave is higher and the coverage of leave policies is more universal.

The majority of Member States have set eligibility conditions which are connected to working arrangements. The parental leave directive gives Member States the right to make entitlement to parental leave subject ‘to a period of work qualification and/or a length of service qualification which shall not exceed one year’. This illustrates well how certain FWAs like short-term contracts or other new forms of work can be seen as a double-edged sword. While providing flexibility and therefore better support for work—life balance, non-standard work also puts people in a precarious situations by excluding them from social policies. Non-standard and new forms of work are a fast‑growing trend in the labour market, which makes it urgent to revisit social‑protection mechanisms which are still designed for old and standard forms of work.

Currently, policies may reinforce labour market or other inequalities by excluding those most at risk. For instance, in six Member States more than 25 % of young (20-24 year old) employed women and men were ineligible for parental leave. People in in lower-skilled and manual jobs are more likely to be ineligible than those in higher-skilled occupations. Same-sex couples are not eligible for parental leave in 11 Member States.

There are also other terrains to be explored. Namely, the parental leave directive gives the employer the right ‘to postpone the granting of parental leave for justifiable reasons related to the operation of the organisation’. There is no evidence as to what extent employers exercise their right to deny mothers and fathers their rights over business interests and whether there are any gendered consequences. Studies have shown that employers’ attitudes are often an obstacle for men to take up parental leave (e.g. Wall & Leitão, 2017).

The analysis of eligibility for parental leave could complement an in-depth analysis of Member State-specific challenges identified by the social scoreboard and strengthen the analytical basis of the Commission’s proposals for Member States‑specific European semester recommendations.

Overall, 14 % of households in the EU 2016 reported unmet needs for childcare services, and it is still women who are more likely than men to step in to fill in the gap, either at the expense of their jobs or taking on a double shift. In a context where women continue to bear a heavier burden of informal care, having no childcare granted after parental‑leave entitlements are exhausted has clear repercussions on female employment rates, and more widely on gender equality. In the EU, 10 % of women work part-time or are inactive due to care duties, while this applies to only 1 % of men. In households with the youngest child under 7 years of age, women spend on average 32 hours a week on paid work and 39 hours on unpaid work, compared to 41 hours and 19 hours for men respectively.

The European Pillar of Social Rights declares access to affordable and good-quality childcare services one of its core principles. Now that good progress has been made in reaching the Barcelona targets, the time may have come to consider a review of the Barcelona targets by looking more broadly into the qualitative aspects of services and exploring their links with employment targets, work—life balance and other economic indicators.

The European Pillar of Social Rights declares access to affordable and good-quality LTC services to be one of its core principles. Improving the availability, affordability and quality of LTC services is also one of the priority areas for action in the Commission’s ‘New start’ initiative on work—life balance. In addition, the European disability strategy 2010-2020 promotes the transition from institutional to community-based care. The 2019 directive on work—life balance for parents and carers introduced a new annual right for workers to take at least 5 working days of carers’ leave in the event of serious illness or dependency of a relative or a person who lives in the same household as the worker. This provision aims to improve carers’ work—life- balance and, at the same time, avoid their dropping out of the labour market entirely.

The scarce statistics that are available on commuting and transport show that on average women spend as much as 40 minutes and men 45 minutes of their day on commuting to and from the workplace. Women more often than men are users of public transport as they have more limited access to private cars — a sign of gender inequalities in other fields of life. Being carers of small children but also of persons with physical limitations, the physical accessibility of public transport as well as the quality and maintenance of roads may determine the real mobility of these people. Suitable, fast, safe and convenient means of transport not only allow for a better work—life balance but also support job searching and taking up better positions in the labour market.

In Member States where the level of women’s mobility is higher, women and men are more equality involved in caring and household activities. Also, the scores of the domain of work are higher in those countries where women’s commuting times are longer, indicating that in countries where women are freer to move they have better work opportunities. Time pressure among working women is often caused by an incompatibility between the location and opening hours of childcare facilities and employment times (McLean, Naumann, & Koslowski, 2016; Steiber, 2009).

Urban planning in general, but also the planning of public transport and the maintenance of roads, are highly significant from a gender perspective, supporting or complicating the everyday logistics and balancing of work and life. The European Economic and Social Committee states in its opinion that gender consideration is currently absent from EU transport policy. The transport sector is traditionally male dominated, and as a result transport policy is male oriented and also centered around men’s lifestyles (European Economic and Social Committee, 2015). The mainstreaming of gender into policies impacting transport and public infrastructure is needed. Better data is also needed in order to carry out analysis from a gender perspective on how public infrastructures restrict or support work—life balance and gender equality.

People in occupations requiring a lower level of qualifications are particularly disadvantaged as regards flexibility in working‑time arrangements. As mentioned earlier, they also are less likely to benefit from parental leave. This partially explains why women with a lower level of qualifications are very likely to be out of paid work and not searching for a job because of care responsibilities (EIGE, 2017d). This is also an illustration of the far‑reaching employment and income effects of failing to reach reconciliation of work and personal‑life demands.

While part-time arrangements, one of the types of FWA, may be a desirable solution if they are voluntary and temporary, this should not be the only way to a better work—life balance. It should also not mean that part-time jobs become ‘traps’ for women, harming their economic independence, career prospects, and future pension entitlements. Public policies, particularly those ensuring sufficient and affordable care provisions, need to be in place in order to support (re-)entry to full-time paid work for women. This would support labour‑market adjustments as regards of the availability and flexibility of full-time jobs.

Family-related duties prevent women from participating in lifelong learning and training, and this effect is strongest among women with small children. On average in the EU 40 % of women and 24 % of men cannot participate in lifelong learning due to family responsibilities. In nearly all Member States, men report conflicts of work schedule more often than women do as an obstacle to participating in lifelong learning and training. This is why work—life balance, participation in lifelong learning and gender equality are strongly interconnected. The ‘New start’ initiative on work—life balance provides a promising basis for closer integration of policies on work—life balance and policies on education, training and lifelong learning.

Taking an intersectional perspective here puts the same groups of women and men in the limelight once again: older women and men and those with a lower level of qualifications have lower rates of participation in lifelong learning. When taking a holistic approach where all aspects of work—life balance are looked at together, it becomes clear that inequalities amplify each other, and that there are certain groups of women and men whose life arrangements are such that they are disadvantaged more than others in several dimensions of work—life balance.