Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

E2: Environmental statistics and accounts; sustainable development

e-mail contact : ESTAT-SDI-EU2020-INDICATORS@ec.europa.eu

The indicator is part of the EU Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicator set. It is used to monitor progress towards SDG 5 on gender equality.

SDG 5 aims at achieving gender equality by, among other things, full and effective participation and providing equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of economic decision-making for women.

Indicator can be considered as identical to global SDG indicator 5.5.2 "Proportion of women in managerial positions".

The European Commission supports Member States in improving the gender balance in decision-making positions, by monitoring the situation and disseminating information, data and analysis of trends in the field, in particular through its annual reports on equality between women and men.

The indicator measures the share of female board members in the largest publicly listed companies. Publicly listed means that the shares of the company are traded on the stock exchange. The ‘largest’ companies are taken to be the members (max. 50) of the primary blue-chip index, which is an index maintained by the stock exchange and covers the largest companies by market capitalisation and/or market trades. Only companies which are registered in the country concerned are counted. Board members cover all members of the highest decision-making body in each company (i.e. chairperson, non-executive directors, senior executives and employee representatives, where present). The highest decision-making body is usually termed the supervisory board (in case of a two-tier governance system) or the board of directors (in a unitary system).

Executives refer to senior executives in the two highest decision-making bodies of the largest (max. 50) nationally registered companies listed on the national stock exchange.. The two highest decision-making bodies are usually referred to as the supervisory board and the management board (in case of a two-tier governance system) and the board of directors and executive/management committee (in a unitary system).

% of positions.

Second half-year except for the current year (latest available data).

Indicator from non-ESS source. For assessment of accuracy please refer to the original source (see link to external data source and metadata in section “Annexes”).

EIGE (GSD)

Data source: The Gender Statistics Database (GSD)

Data provider: European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE)

Every year

Indicator is updated annually.

T+1 year

New data points are disseminated within one year after the reference year.

All EU MS

Data are presented for all EU Member States plus the United Kingdom, Iceland, Norway, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey.

All EU MS

Data are comparable between all EU Member States respectively other presented countries.

> 10 years

Presented time series (including EU aggregates) starts in 2003.

> 4 data points

Length of comparable time series without methodological break is longer than 4 data points.

Analysis of indicator is presented in Eurostat's annual monitoring report on Sustainable development in the EU (progress towards SDGs in the EU context).

See table  sdg_05_60

Eurostat dedicated section on SDGs: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/sdi/overview

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