This means that although women represented almost half of all employed people in the EU (46.4%), they were under-represented amongst managers (34.8%) in 2023. In 2014, women accounted for 45.8% of people in employment and took up 31.8% of the managerial positions.
The good news is that Latvia is one of the top countries in Europe when it comes to having women in senior positions – indeed, Latvia is only just behind the renowned bastion of gender equality, Sweden. However, it’s also worth noting that Latvia’s figure has fallen back slightly compared with 2014.
Among the EU countries, the largest share of women in managerial positions in 2023 was recorded in Sweden (43.7%), followed by Latvia (42.9%) and Poland (42.3%), while Luxembourg (22.2%), Croatia (23.8%) and Czechia (27.4%) observed the lowest shares.
Since 2014, the overall number of women in managerial positions in the EU has grown by 3.1 percentage points (pp) and 20 countries have seen an increase.
Cyprus (+10.5 pp), Malta (+8.3 pp) and Sweden (+6.5 pp) reported the largest increases, while the share of female managers fell the most in Hungary and Slovenia (both -2.6 pp) and Lithuania (-1.7 pp).
The data was published March 5 ahead of International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8.
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