WOMEN ARE MORE EDUCATED. MEN STILL OWN THE TOP.
Women Won the Education Race. They Are Still Losing the Economic One.
There is something profoundly wrong with the way we normally discuss women in the labour market.
We talk about progress.
More women graduate from university.
More women work.
More women enter professions once almost entirely occupied by men.
More women sit on corporate boards.
More women become ministers, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, scientists and executives.
All true.
And yet when we move away from participation and examine money, hours worked, career continuity and real power, the picture changes dramatically.
Across the European Union, young women are now considerably more educated than young men.
Among people aged 25–34 in 2024, 49.8% of women had completed tertiary education, compared with only 38.6% of men.
That is an extraordinary advantage of more than 11 percentage points. (European Commission)
And yet in the same European labour market, the employment rate for women aged 20–64 was only 70.8%, compared with 80.8% for men.
Women were also much more likely to work part-time: 27.8% of employed women versus just 7.7% of men. They were more likely to be underemployed and somewhat more likely to hold temporary contracts. (European Commission)
Then comes pay.
Women in the EU earned, on average, 11.1% less per hour than men in 2024, using Eurostat’s unadjusted gender pay-gap measure. (European Commission)
Then comes corporate power.
Women now occupy roughly one third of board positions in the EU’s largest listed companies.
But move closer to actual executive control and their presence collapses.
Women account for less than one fifth of executive directors, only a little over 10% of board chairs, and less than 10% of CEOs of the EU’s largest listed companies. (European Institute for Gender Equality)