A clock
9th January 2020
107 years left to reach gender parity in Eastern Europe

According to the Global Gender Gap Report, Lithuania dropped from 24th to 33rd place in 2019. The index, published by the World Economic Forum, measures gender equality progress in 153 countries.

The index scores are based on the evaluation of 4 dimensions: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival and Political Empowerment. In 2019 the global overall index was 69% (0 meaning disparity, 100 meaning parity), one percent higher than the previous year. It was mainly driven by a progress on the Political Empowerment subindex.

However, at the current pace the overall gap is thought to be closed in 99.5 years on average. The slowest progress is observed in the Economic Participation and Opportunity area – it will take 257 years to close the gender gap there. The second is Political Empowerement (94.5 years), the third – Education Attainment (12 years).

According to the report, it will take 107 years on average to reach gender parity in Eastern Europe, but the Baltic states are seen to be the gender equality leaders in the region. In the global rank, Latvia holds 11th place, Estonia is on 26th and Lithuania follows with 33rd place.

The Lithuanian score decreased mostly because of regress in the area of Political Empowerment. It was caused by the fact that Lithuania was the only EU state with an all-male cabinet of ministers for 9 months. Since the Political Empowerment subindex measures the indicator called “Women in ministerial positions”, Lithuania received 0 points for that. The country did not show any significant progress or breakthrough in other measured areas as well.

More information can be found here.