The UK has been found to be the sixth best country in Europe for working women, according to new research by Digital PR Agency.
It uncovered the state of workplace gender equality across Europe by creating a points-based index system using available data. It analysed the number of women in leadership positions, female employment, the gender gap index and maternity policies in each country.
The findings revealed that the UK has a final equality index score of 5.78/10 and also scored 8.27/10 for number of women in the workplace, the highest score out of every country.
The UK also ranked highly for women in leadership positions, scoring 7.20/10. It also scored 8.33 for growth of women in leadership positions in the past five years, the highest in the top 10 European Union countries.
The country that ranked the best in Europe for women to work was Norway, with a total gender equality score of 7.11 out of 10 and a score of 7.14/10 for its high percentage of female chief executive officers (CEOs), executives, non-executives, presidents and board members. It scored highly in the gender gap index (8.80/10) and had the third highest score in the top 10 for its maternity policies (5.88/10).
Iceland took second place, with a total gender equality score of 6.75/10 and the best gender gap index score of all countries analysed (10/10), closing 91.2% of its gender gap and ranking first for the 14th consecutive year.
A Digital PR Agency spokesperson said: “Data on the percentage of CEOs, executives, non-executives, presidents and board members of the largest listed businesses per country in 2023 was sourced from the gender statistics database compiled by the European Institute for Gender Equality, along with the percentage of women between the ages of 16-65 in employment in 2022 and growth.
“To consider gender gaps by country, the global index score for each country in the study was sourced from the World Economic Forum gender gap index. The rights to minimum maternity leave were assessed by comparing the number of weeks of minimum leave per country as well as the percentage of income paid during that leave. A final normalised score was calculated and added to the final index.”
