European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE)

European Institute for Gender Equality, Gedimino pr. 16, LT-01103 Vilnius, Lithuania

EIGE.SEC@eige.europa.eu

+370 5 215 7444

27/11/2024

The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) Gender Statistics Database collects data on the numbers of women and men in key decision-making positions across a number of different life domains in order to provide reliable statistics that can be used to monitor the current situation and trends through time.

The domains covered include politics, public administration, judiciary, business and finance, social partners and NGOs, environment, media, science and research, sports, transport, COVID-19, and EU funding. The decision-making positions covered are specific to each area.

Data on national social partner organisations cover the presidents, deputy/vice-presidents, members of the highest decision-making body, and the daily executive head of labour and employer’s organisations that are either involved regularly in cross-industry collective bargaining or employment regulation or in bipartite/tripartite consultations on cross-industry labour market and industrial relations issues in 38 countries.

The women and men in decision-making (WMID) data are organised into life domains and then by types of organisation and the different decision-making positions within the hierarchy of each organisational type. The domains covered are:

• Politics
• Public administration
• Judiciary
• Business and finance
• Social partners and NGOs
• Environment
• Media
• Science and research
• Sports
• Transport
• COVID-19
• EU funding

Details of the organisations and positions covered are provided in the section on statistical concepts and definitions.

Not applicable.

General definitions:

A decision-making position is a position from which it is possible to take or influence a decision:

• within a domain: at organisational level. This restricts coverage to organisations having a major influence in the domain at the territorial level of interest, which is usually national but can also be international, European, regional or local.
• within an organisation: at hierarchical level. This restricts coverage to positions within the hierarchy that have a major input to decision-making within the organisation.

National social partner organisations

Organisations covered:

• Social partner organisations are labour and employer’s confederations, federations or other bodies forming the two sides of social dialogue. Social dialogue can be discussions, consultations, negotiations and joint actions and can take different forms: bipartite (involving representatives of workers and employers) or tripartite (also associating public authorities and/or representatives of civil society, NGOs, etc.); take place at various levels: company, sectoral / cross-sectoral and local / regional / national / transnational; and at the international level, be bilateral, trilateral or multilateral, according to the number of countries involved.
• Data cover labour and employer’s confederations, federations or other bodies that have a national scope, are not affiliated to any other higher-level organisation at national level and are either involved regularly in cross-industry collective bargaining or employment regulation; or that are involved in bipartite/tripartite consultations on cross-industry labour market and industrial relations issues. The organisations covered represent more than one economic sector or a category of enterprises or organisations across the economy or a category of employees across the economy.
• Data also cover regional organisations that are involved in national cross-industry tripartite and/or bipartite arrangements; organisations affiliated to higher-level bodies but which participate in their own right in national cross-industry tripartite and/or bipartite arrangements; and essential single-sector organisations that play a clear role in national cross-industry tripartite and/or bipartite arrangements.
• Chambers of commerce, industry and services that are involved in collective bargaining or have some other clear industrial relations role are included in the data.

Positions covered:

• President: highest governing position or chairperson of highest decision-making body. For organisations that do not have a president, the secretary general is counted instead.
• Deputy/Vice-presidents: deputy of the person holding the highest governing position. For organisations that do not have a president and deputy/vice-presidents, deputy/vice-secretary general(s) is counted instead.
• Members: members of the highest decision-making body (count includes, where present, the president(s), vice-president(s) and executive head(s)). The counting includes only members with full voting rights.
• Executive head: highest executive position or head of the highest executive body. Usually referred to as either the secretary general or managing director. For organisations that do not have a separate executive position, the president is counted instead.

Mapping tables:

• National social partners: employee organisations
• National social partners: employer organisations

Notes:

• For each social partner organisation, the highest decision-making body/bodies covered are those bodies:
  • that have a major impact on the policy and operation of the organisation;
  • that take decisions on a regular basis (more than biannually); and
  • whose members are clearly identifiable individuals and not organisations.
• If the head of the highest decision-making body and the head of the daily executive body are the same person, he/she is counted in both positions.

The statistical unit in WMID data is the organisational unit as defined by each specific topic (e.g. a house of parliament or a large listed company). Data are then collected on the numbers of men and women occupying decision-making positions within that unit.

Data cover all persons occupying specified positions in the organisational units covered (see statistical concepts and definitions).

The WMID data cover the 27 EU Member States, United Kingdom, five EU candidate countries (including Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, Serbia and Turkey), two potential candidates (Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo⁽*⁾) and the remaining three EEA countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway).

⁽*⁾ This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo Declaration of Independence.

WMID data on national social partner organisations were first collected in the 4th quarter of 2014 for 34 countries and 2014 data for Montenegro were added at the beginning of 2016. The geographic coverage of the database has expanded through time so for the countries listed below the time series starts in the period indicated:

• Albania: 2018
• Bosnia and Herzegovina: 2018
• Kosovo: 2018

Not applicable.

No legal acts are applicable. The Council of the European Union has committed to ongoing monitoring of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and as part of this commitment the European Commission has been collecting data on decision-making since 2003, a task that has been taken over by EIGE since 2017.

The WMID database was managed by the European Commission until end 2016 and then transferred to EIGE.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Generally, data are disseminated within one month of the data collection (see section on reference period). Data are published on the EIGE Gender Statistics database.

Not applicable.

Data are disseminated to all types of users simultaneously via the EIGE Gender Statistics database.

No regular news release.

From 2017, EIGE will publish regular bulletins on gender statistics, which may cover data on decision-making. The European Commission's Annual Report on Equality usually includes a section on this topic.

EIGE Gender Statistics database

Micro-data are not made available.

WMID data are the primary source of information for indicators to monitor the implementation of Area G of the Beijing Platform for Action.

WMID Methodological report

Not applicable.

WMID data are collected either directly from the organisations covered or from umbrella organisations providing data on behalf of member organisations. The majority of data are collected from the websites or other publications produced by the organisations concerned but some are also collected from direct contacts. There are three main risks in the data collection: ensuring the right decision-making bodies and positions are identified; ensuring that the gender of the people in these positions is correctly recorded; and ensuring that the information is up-to-date.

The data are collected by a team of experienced researchers and are subject to routine validation that includes:

• cross-checking of data relating to at least 10% of organisations covered (randomly selected) by another researcher;
• verification of data with the organisation concerned;
• comparison of data with previous periods and review in case of significant change.

WMID data need to be viewed bearing in mind the inherent diversity of institutional and organisational structures and in the scope of decision-making responsibilities for nominally similar positions. In this sense, there will always be some limitations to the extent to which data can be considered as fully comparable between countries. That being said, the data are considered to be of good quality, collected from reliable sources and with careful application of a common methodology. The data are comprehensive (cover all relevant organisations) and complete (data are available for all relevant positions in each organisation covered) in the vast majority of cases.

WMID data are the primary source of information for indicators to monitor the implementation of Area G (Power and decision-making) of the Beijing Platform for Action. The data are therefore widely used by the European Commission (DG JUST) and the European Institute for Gender Equality for analysis in this area and for reporting to the Council of the European Union.

The data are also widely used by researchers in this area.

No user satisfaction surveys are carried out.

The completeness of WMID data depends on the extent to which the organisations covered openly publish, or are willing to share, information about their key decision-making personnel. In general, there is increasing pressure on organisations of all types to be completely transparent about their organisational structure and operational practices so that completeness of the data has improved through time.

In the case of national social partner organisations, data are generally complete but there are some gaps as some of the organisations covered do not have an official website or contact details.

In principle, the WMID data accurately describe the situation for the area of decision-making concerned, though in some areas the coverage of organisations is restricted to limit the cost and burden of the data collection, and this could potentially impact on overall accuracy.

In the case of national social partner organisations, data can be considered fully accurate, although in some cases data are retrieved from annual reports (which may not be up-to-date) and most recent board decision documents available. Organisations are contacted directly when publicly available information is not sufficient or if further clarification is needed.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Data are released within one month of collection.

Punctuality is 100%.

WMID data are considered comparable between countries but it is necessary to bear in mind the different institutional settings that exist and the fact that decision-making structures vary between organisations within countries as well as between countries. There are, therefore, inherent differences between countries in the way that decision-making is organised but the WMID methodology aims to allow for such variation so that the organisations and positions covered in each country are as comparable as possible.

In the case of national social partner organisations, the major difference between countries is the diversity in the structure of the social dialogue and in the structure of social partner organisations. On the one hand, differences in the structure of the social dialogue affect the comparability in that the number of organisations covered per country may vary significantly. In addition, the diversity in the structures of the organisations affects the comparability of data in terms of bodies and positions, as the size and scope of the governing body and the number of vice-presidents per organisation may vary. It should be noted that the executive heads are not distinguished from the presidents in all organisations.

In general, WMID data are comparable through time in each area of decision-making. Nevertheless, it is necessary to bear in mind that the organisations covered and the decision-making structures within these may vary through time (e.g. government ministries may be reorganised following a change of government, and the constituents of the blue-chip indices used to define the sample of large listed companies are updated by the responsible stock exchange on a regular basis).

 
In the case of national social partner organisations, the changes in national legislation relating to the structure of the social dialogue (e.g. changes in the standards that confederations need to fulfil so as to participate in collective bargaining) or improvements in the methodology may affect the list of organisations to be covered. Governing bodies may also differ over time as organisations may change their internal structure. Apart from these points, data are comparable.

Data were not collected for the IPA beneficiaries (Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Türkiye, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo) in 2024.

In general, there are few other sources of data on decision-making against which to assess the coherence of WMID data. Some national data exist for selected areas of decision-making but often the methodology is not the same (i.e. the coverage of organisations and/or positions within these varies) so that direct comparison is not possible.

In the case of national social partner organisations, since 2008, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) conducts an annual survey on its members to monitor the participation of women in the European trade union movement. In its ninth edition (May 2016), the survey included questions on the proportion of women in key decision-making bodies for the first time. Although some data may coincide, there are differences in methodology (bodies and positions covered) and coverage (the survey only covers employee organisations that are members of ETUC).

Internal coherence of the data (e.g. through time or across countries) is ensured through careful application of the WMID methodology, and routine validation of data.

Revisions to data are infrequent. Occasionally, for example, a response to a request to verify the information collected for a particular organisation is received after the data collection has closed and the results disseminated. If the information leads to a change in the data, then the update is made at the next available opportunity and at the latest within one month.

There is no fixed revision schedule. Any necessary revisions are made on an ad hoc basis (e.g. following clarifications and replies from contact persons).

In 2016, data for a number of organisations were updated for:

• 2014: BE, CZ, DE, ES, FR, IT, LU, HU, MT, NL, AT, RO, SI, SK, FI, ME, MK and NO.

In 2020, data for a number of organisations were updated for:

• 2014: BE, IT, HU, RO, SI, FI, SE, MK, TR;
• 2016: BG, IT, HU, PT, RO, SI, FI, SE, MK, TR, UK, IS;
• 2018: BE, BG, CZ, DK, EL, ES, FR, HR, IT, CY, LT, HU, MT, PL, PT, RO, SI, SK, SE, ME, MK, AL, TR, BA, UK, NO.

In 2020, the organisations covered by the data were revised for:

• 2014: RO, SK;
• 2016: BG, RO, SK, AL;
• 2018: BG, HR, EL, LT, RO, PL, SK, AL, BA.

In January 2021, the organisations covered were revised for RO (2014-2020) and data were updated for RO and UK (2018-2020).

The WMID data are a form of administrative data, being derived from the records that organisations keep regarding the personnel occupying key positions within the organisation. In all areas of decision-making, the data cover all organisations within the scope defined by the methodology. In some areas (e.g. national level politics) all relevant organisations/bodies are covered (e.g. parliaments and governments) whilst in others the methodology restricts coverage so that the data effectively represent a sample of all organisations within the broad type of organisation (e.g. data on decision-making in large companies are restricted to the nationally registered constituents of the main blue-chip index for the country).

Biennially (every two years).

Direct collection of data from official websites and contact person in relevant organisations.

See section on quality assurance.

Data collected from individual organisations are aggregated to the national level by position.

EU-27 figures are based on an aggregate of data at national level, with the percentages of men and women calculated from these aggregates. The shares of men and women observed at the EU level are therefore weighted averages rather than an average of the shares at country level.

Figures for IPA beneficiaries are based on an aggregate of data at national level for the five candidate countries (Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, and Turkey) and two potential candidates (Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo).

Different aggregates can also be computed using the pre-defined table. For example, an “EU candidate countries” aggregate can be created by adding data for Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, and Turkey for the relevant position.

Not applicable.