European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE)
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European Institute for Gender Equality, Gedimino pr. 16, LT-01103 Vilnius, Lithuania
+370 5 215 7444
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07/02/2025
07/02/2025
07/02/2025
The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) Gender Statistics Database collects data on institutional mechanisms for the promotion of gender equality and gender mainstreaming to monitor progress under Area H of the Beijing Platform for Action in the European Union.
The data on institutional mechanisms data are organised into four indicators, each of which has two or more sub-indicators. The top level indicators are:
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Institutional mechanisms refer to national machineries that implement, execute, monitor, evaluate, advocate and mobilise support for policies that promote gender equality and gender mainstreaming. It includes the development and application of gender-based analysis in policies and programmes. The strength of institutional mechanisms is key for ensuring gender mainstreaming and the promotion of gender equality in laws and policies across governments, and ultimately increasing gender equality within society.
Governmental gender equality body (governmental body) is defined by the Council of Europe as a body within the government whose purpose is to ‘design, coordinate and implement government policies for gender equality. It is normally located in the government hierarchy'. A governmental gender equality body can be a separate ministry, paired with other portfolios within a single ministry, or located within the office of the head of government or state. It also includes government agencies.
Independent equality bodies (independent body) are defined as national bodies for the ‘promotion, analysis, monitoring and support of equal treatment of all persons’ without discrimination on the grounds of sex’. Their competences include: ‘providing independent assistance to victims of alleged sex- and gender-based discrimination, conducting independent surveys concerning discrimination, publishing independent reports and making recommendations on any issue relating to such discrimination’.
A governmental national action plan for gender equality focuses on actions to achieve specific outputs and results that a government pursues to achieve specific gender equality goals and to mainstream gender equality in all policies of the government. Governments may also adopt sectoral action plans for gender equality, addressing single aspects of gender equality e.g. in health or education.
A governmental national strategy for gender equality provides an overall vision, mission, values, priorities and activities to achieve a policy objective or goal. It is separate from an action plan which lays out the steps and actions – ideally with targets and timelines - that will be taken to achieve specific gender equality objectives (typically those laid out in the gender equality strategy).
Gender mainstreaming is the (re)organisation, improvement, development and evaluation of policy processes, so that a gender equality perspective is incorporated into all policies at all levels and all stages, by the actors normally involved in policymaking.
Gender impact assessment is a policy tool for the screening of a given policy proposal, in order to detect and assess its differential impact or effects on women and men, so that these imbalances can be redressed before the proposal is endorsed.
Gender equality training is any educational tool or process
that aims to make policymakers and other actors in the EU and Member States more aware of gender equality issues, build their gender competence and enable them to promote gender equality goals in their work at all levels.
Gender budgeting is the application of gender mainstreaming in the budgetary process. It entails a gender-based assessment of budgets, incorporating a gender perspective at all levels of the budgetary process, and restructuring revenues and expenditures in order to promote gender equality.
Gender-sensitive language Gender-sensitive language is gender equality made manifest through language. Language plays an important role in how women’s and men’s positions in society are perceived and interpreted, which in turn influences the attitudes towards women and men. Certain words or use of the masculine form as the generic one (common in most languages) can overshadow women in the law, contribute to stereotypes (for instance, in professions), and make women’s roles and needs invisible, among other things. In this way, language contributes to, produces and reproduces sexist and biased thoughts, attitudes and behaviours.
Senior minister refers to a member of the government who has a seat on the cabinet or council of ministers.
Junior minister refers to a member of the government who does not have a seat on the cabinet.
Targets only include those that are measurable and associated with specific indicators.
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EU Member States
The latest data were collected regarding the situation in May 2024. Previous collections cover the situation in 2021, 2018, 2012, and 2005.
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May 2024
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.
In accordance with the commitment of the Council of the European Union to monitoring implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, data were collected by the European Commission in 2006 and by EIGE since 2012.
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There is no fixed schedule. To date the data collection has been run every two to three years. Data are typically published around nine months after collection on EIGE’s Gender Statistics database.
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EIGE publishes the results in its dedicated Gender Statistics Database:
There is no fixed schedule. To date the data collection has been run every two to three years and data are typically published around nine months after collection.
No regular news releases.
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No micro-data are disseminated.
Institutional mechanisms data are the primary source of information for indicators to monitor the implementation of Area H of the Beijing Platform for Action.
The 2024 methodological report is available here.
The 2021 methodological report, which includes some important information about changes made to the indicators that impact on comparability with previous years, is available here.
Please refer to sections 14 and 20.5 of these metadata.
A thorough data quality process was implemented following the collection of the data. This involved three steps. Quality assurance focused on:
For all quality assurance decisions, strict reference was made to the data collection guidelines shared with the national researchers and National Focal Points. The guidelines set out definitions of key terms and information on how questions should be interpreted.
National researchers were asked to liaise with the National Focal Points to address all quality assurance issues and amend responses where appropriate. In a few instances, the data provided by the National Focal Points was considered not to comply with the guidelines, most commonly because of insufficient evidence and the data was changed by the central study team, most commonly to ‘don’t know’.
For further information, please see: Quality Considerations for EIGE’s Gender Statistics Database
Overall, the data on institutional mechanisms for the promotion of gender equality and gender mainstreaming can be considered of good quality, collected from reliable sources and with careful application of a common methodology.
The data are the primary source of information for indicators to monitor the implementation of Area H (Institutional mechanisms for the promotion of gender equality) of the Beijing Platform for Action. The data are therefore widely used by the Council of the European Union and the European Institute for Gender Equality for analysis in this area.
The data are also widely used by researchers in this area.
No user opinions have been collected.
In the 2024 data collection, there were limited data gaps due to lack of, or limited, response from the relevant authorities or because of data quality concerns. All data gaps, by question, are outlined in section 4 of the 2024 methodological report.
Although data on financial resources were collected, the data remain incomplete. For example, a number of Member States did not have the data on expenditure for 2023 at the time of data collection, as this data is contained in annual reports that are produced at the end of the following year (i.e., after the end of the data collection). As a result, many Member States reported budget data or data from the previous year (2022). Moreover, even where data have been provided, the quality assurance process raised significant concerns about data quality and comparability.
Data can largely be considered accurate due to quality assurance process whereby all data was checked for coherence with the questionnaire guidelines (further outlined in Section 4). It should however be noted that institutional mechanisms are often highly complex and context specific and thus cannot be fully captured in a quantified measurement framework.
Data accuracy is somewhat weakened where it relied on an estimation by the national focal point. This includes questions about:
The risk of inaccurate responses was mitigated to some extent, by asking for percentages according to four broad categories (0–25 %, 25–50 %, 50–75 %, 75 %–100 %), rather than an exact percentage. This approach also encouraged a response rather than a ‘don’t know’ when the exact data was not available. While information was asked about how an estimate was made, where this was provided, the answers in nearly all cases referred to the national focal points’ experience, rather than a verifiable source.
No sampling error has been identified. All bodies identified were validated by the National Focal Points. The bodies are mapped in Annex 1 of the 2024 methodological report.
Independent bodies were identified based on membership of EQUINET (European Network of Equality Bodies) as a reliable source to validate findings. There are two exceptions where independent gender equality bodies covered in the 2021 and 2024 data are not members of EQUINET:
In addition, in three Member States (EL, AT, FI), the second governmental body derived from the list of bodies established in the 2021 data collection did not meet the BPfA’s definition of a governmental body, which is a body ‘whose purpose is to design, coordinate, and implement government policies for gender equality’. However, since these Member States consider these bodies as an intrinsic part of their institutional architecture for gender equality and gender mainstreaming, it was decided to include these bodies in the scoring. Nevertheless, including these bodies in the data collection impacted the overall scoring for these countries for H1d (and H2a).
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Data are considered comparable between Member States. Nevertheless, it is important to recognise that the structure, mandate, and function of institutional mechanisms for the promotion of gender equality and gender mainstreaming vary considerably across countries in response to the different social, political, and institutional contexts. The conceptual and measurement frameworks for the data collection and the questionnaire have been progressively developed to allow for and respond to this variation and produce data that is as comparable as possible.
Data for 2021 and 2024 are considered comparable with the 2021 data, with limited changes to the questionnaire in 2024 that only marginally affect the scoring compared to 2021. See details in section 2.8 of the 2024 methodological report.
Data for previous years (2018, 2012, and 2005) are not considered comparable due to successive changes in the questionnaire, the selection of questions used for indicators, and scoring thereof. The most important changes were made in 2021. Information on these changes are available in the 2021 methodological report.
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The findings based on EIGE’s data collection have full internal coherence.
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In a limited number of cases, revisions of the 2021 data have been made in light of better or more detailed information made available in 2024. Details of the revisions by question are provided in section 2.6 of the 2024 methodological report.
The revisions made at question level had the following net impact on 2021 scores for the following countries/indicators (the value shown represents the change compared to the previously published score). There were no net changes for indicator H2.
|
Country |
H1 |
H3 |
H4 |
|
BE |
1 |
1 | |
|
BG |
-2.5 |
||
|
DE |
-0.5 |
||
|
EE |
-0.5 |
||
|
EL |
-2 |
||
|
HR |
-1 |
||
|
LT |
1 |
||
|
LU |
-0.5 |
||
|
LV |
-1 |
||
|
MT |
0.5 |
||
|
AT |
1 |
||
|
PT |
-1 |
||
|
SI |
-0.5 | ||
|
SE |
0 |
-2 |
There is no fixed revision schedule. Any necessary revisions are made on an ad hoc basis.
None - data was collected through primary research.
There is no fixed schedule. To date the data collection has been run every two to three years.
Data was collected through an excel questionnaire (prepopulated with 2021 data for reference) sent to the national focal points. Details of the questionnaire are available in Annex 3 of the 2024 Methodological report).
Data was primarily collected by National Focal Points appointed by the Member States (see list in Annex 2 of the 2024 Methodological report).
National researchers were assigned to work with National Focal Points in each Member State. Their role was, firstly, to support the National Focal Point to collect data, such as to carry out additional interviews, to reduce the administrative burden on National Focal Point. Secondly, national researchers were trained on the data collection tools and guidelines and thus able to support the National Focal Points to collect more accurate data.
As outlined in Annex 2 of the 2024 Methodological report, in a few Member States, other institutions also contributed to the data collection primarily national statistical offices in relation to indicator H4.
National researchers and National Focal Points worked together in different ways, at the direction of the National Focal Point. Some national focal points worked independently, with their response later checked by the national researcher against the guidelines, whereas others worked closely together via online meetings to complete the questionnaire together. All information was validated by the National Focal Point.
Data validation procedures have been described at point 12 (Quality management).
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