Mapping the state of women’s equality region by region

The Female Achievement Index (FemAI) shows how well women thrive compared to the best regional performance, while the Female Disadvantage Index (FemDI) measures how disadvantaged women are compared to men in each of 235 NUTS-2 regions. Developed by the European Commission, these are the first two indices to map the state of gender equality in almost all of the EU’s regions.

These complementary indices were made public in October 2021 and reveal intriguing trends. In general, women achieve more and face less gender disadvantage in more developed regions but have more limited prospects in the least developed regions. The best results are in regions around capitals and in regions with strong economic performance, human development and good-quality government.

In concrete terms, women in Nordic regions and most Austrian regions have the highest level of achievement, while the lowest performances are in south-eastern Member States. Women in Nordic regions also face the least disadvantage as do women in France and Spain. Meanwhile women in Greece and Romania face the highest disadvantage of all the regions compared to men.

Measuring impacts

FemAI and FemDI each score achievement and disadvantage on a 0-100 scale for seven domains: “Work & Money”, “Knowledge”, “Time”, “Power”, “Health”, “Safety, Security & Trust” and “Quality of Life”.

Scores are based on 33 indicators divided across the domains. For example, “Time” uses four indicators to measure how strongly women are involved in sport, cultural or leisure outside the home, compared to men. These indicators measure participation in leisure activities, giving money to charity, helping a stranger and volunteering for an organisation.

Citizens can view how well individual countries are doing by filtering results in country-comparison charts, then drill down to local performance in region-by-region charts. There is an option on all charts to dive deeper into the source data for more targeted analysis.

EU snapshot

The monitor’s interactive map provides an overview of female achievement and disadvantage across the EU. When the results for the two indices are analyses, they reveal four groups of EU regions.

Almost half of the EU population lives in the best-performing regions, where women have above-average achievement and below-average disadvantage. These regions are mostly in north-western Europe and Spain.

Regions where women achieve a lot but have high disadvantage, so men achieve more, are home to another 11 % of EU residents. These are in Czechia, Slovenia and north-western Europe. Another 4 % of people are in a handful of areas where women achieve less but have low disadvantage, meaning that men also achieve less.

Finally, the least positive combination, low achievement and high disadvantage, is mostly found in eastern and southern EU countries and covers over a third of the EU population.

A Commission working paper, available online, provides more information about the results and how they were measured. A website to explore all results and charts can be accessed on the EU’s Urban Data Platform.

Find out more:

Mapping the glass ceiling: The EU regions where women thrive and where they are held back

Urban Data Platform Plus: FemAI and FemDI