While Belgium's gender employment gap is several percentage points below the EU's, there are significant regional and provincial differences, figures from the EU's official statistics office Eurostat showed.
Over the past decade, the gender employment gap – defined as the difference between the employment rates of men and women aged 20-64 – has decreased slightly in the EU from 12.2 in 2012 to 10.7 percentage points (pp) in 2022, figures from Eurostat revealed. However, it remains well above the level the EU hopes to achieve by 2030.
"A variety of reasons cause gender disparities in employment, such as unpaid care responsibilities of women, hiring discrimination, and scarcity of women in leadership," Eurostat noted. "Additionally, factors such as inadequate childcare, tax disincentives, and occupational segregation contribute to enduring gender employment gaps."
In 2019, the EU set a goal to halve the gender gap by 2030, aiming for a target of 5.8 percentage points between the employment rate of men and women. Just one in five regions in the EU has already reached this milestone, including some in Belgium, namely the provinces of West Flanders (5.7 pp), Walloon Brabant (5.8 pp) and Namur (3.8 pp).
Overall in Belgium, the gender employment gap has dropped from 11 in 2012 to 7.6 in 2022. Over the years, Flanders and Wallonia have been the best-performing regions, with their gender employment gaps decreasing from 10.5 and 11.4, respectively, ten years ago to 7 and 7.7 percentage points.
Meanwhile, Brussels has lagged behind every year. The gap has gone from 12 pp in 2012 to 10.2 last year, but the figure is still almost double the target set by the EU. In 2020, likely due to the pandemic, the gap shot back up to 12 pp.
Despite a decade of overall improvement when it comes to the general employment rate, the number of people of working age in Brussels who are employed is the lowest in the county. This explains why the larger gap in Brussels doesn't have a greater impact on Belgium's overall score.
What contributes to the gap?
More recent figures from Statbel showed that the female participation rate was 56.6% in Brussels (compared to 65.3% for men), 61.8% in Wallonia (66.8% for men) and 73.2% in Flanders (79.9% for men) in the first quarter of this year, again highlighting that the employment gender gap is greater in Brussels than in Flanders or Wallonia.
The Institute for Gender Equality in Belgium highlighted that several factors come into play in getting people activated on the labour market. "It looks like people who experience difficulties doing so are represented to a slightly greater extent in Brussels. So the audience is different compared to Wallonia or Flanders."
For example, there are more people of foreign origin in Brussels than in the other regions (36% of the Brussels population is non-Belgian and there are 183 different nationalities). "As a result, there may be less chance of someone speaking one of the national languages needed on a job," a spokesperson of the institute explained.
Women in Brussels are also more likely to be victims of workplace discrimination based on their gender and foreign origin, and finally, around 12% of all families in Brussels are single-parent families, with a majority of women being heads of household, compared to 8% for Flanders.
Best and worst performing countries
Other regions which are successful in narrowing down the gap to reach the EU's target are mainly concentrated in France (14 regions), Germany (seven regions) and Finland (all five regions met the target).
There were only two EU regions (comparable in size to Belgium's provinces) that registered a higher employment rate among women in 2022. The capital region of Lithuania (Sostinės regions) where the gap was -1.2 pp and southern Finland (Etelä-Suomi) where it was -0.2 pp. In northeastern Finland (Pohjois- ja Itä-Suomi) there was no difference in employment rates between men and women.
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In all other EU regions, the gender gap persisted with higher rates of employment for men. In 20 such smaller regions, the gender employment gap was at least 20 pp in 2022. Half of these were in Greece, while the remainder were concentrated in Italy (seven regions where the gap was higher than 20 pp) and Romania (three regions).
The highest gender employment gaps were recorded in central Greece (Sterea Elláda, with 31.4 pp) and the southern Italian region of Puglia (30.7 pp).
