Malta’s gender employment gap between the ages of 20 and 64 has continued to decrease, but it still remains the highest in Europe, statistics published by Eurostat show.

The statistics look at the one of the European Union’s Sustainable Development Goals, that being Gender Equality which focuses on progress made in abating gender-based violence and in fostering gender equality in education, employment and leadership positions.

Looking at the difference between the employment rate of men and women, Eurostat’s data shows that in Malta in 2017 there was a 24.1% gap between genders – the highest in Europe.  Malta was followed in the ranking by Italy (19.8%) and Greece (19.7%), while the EU average gap is listed as being that of 11.5%.

At the other end of the spectrum, Baltic and Scandinavian take the top honours with the five countries having the smallest gap hailing from these regions. In fact, Lithuania performs best with a gap of just 1%, followed by Finland (3.5%), Sweden (4%), Latvia (4.3%), and Denmark (6.5%).

It should be noted that the 24.1% gap shown by Eurostat represents the lowest figure that Malta’s gender employment gap has been since records started being taken in 2001.  Indeed since then this gap has steadily decreased from a peak of 48.8% in 2001.

Indeed, whilst the figure remained in a similar ball-park up to 2004 (when it stood at 46.9%), it has since decreased in every year save for between 2015 and 2016 – when the percentage remained identical.

Gender equality is one of the EU’s 17 Sustainable Development goals.  These goals focus on a myriad of field such as poverty, hunger, education, climate action, responsible consumption and production, and a host of others.