Female empowerment for International Women’s Day

To coincide with International Women’s Day on  March 8, research revealed that Finland is the best country in the European Union for women in the workplace.

Personal finance experts Finansvalp analysed Eurostat data on seats held by women in national parliaments, women in senior management positions, and the 2022 median net income by gender in the 27 EU member countries.

Then, each country was given a gender-equality score out of 50 and ranked from worst to best.

Finland came first

Finland was ranked above every other country due to a high percentage of women in senior roles nationwide.

Women take 72.4 per cent of seats in the national government, the highest percentage of any country in the EU but despite a high volume of women taking on senior positions in the country, the gender pay gap still seems to be an issue with women on average earning 6.04 per cent less than men.

Portugal was a close second and is the only member of the EU where women earn more than men on average although by less than 1 per cent even though that country had the sixth lowest share of female executives.

France came third with an EU record of 46.1 per cent of board members at large corporations whilst Sweden came fourth and The Netherlands fifth.

Spain was eighth

The next five in order were Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Germany and Lithuania whilst in 27^th place was Hungary.

Olle Pettersson, finance expert and CEO of Swedish organisation Finansvalp, commented on the study: “In the last 20 years, the number of women holding seats at national government and national parliament level in the EU has risen by over 50 per cent, while the share of female board members at the largest publicly listed companies has exploded by 312 per cent.”