It is a pleasure to be with you today to launch this years Gender Equality Index. This is our yearly check-up, our thermometer of gender equality in the EU. You know the expression: if you cant measure it, you cant fix it.
This is why this Index matters and why your work matters. I want to personally thank you for that. This year, you put in extra work to upgrade the methodology to better reflect todays realities.
You have put a stronger focus on areas like gender segregation in education and work, inequalities affecting single-parent households, and inequalities that cut across different grounds of discrimination. These and all the improvements you have implemented make the Index even more relevant for policymaking. This is crucial because precise, high-quality data is the bedrock of effective policy. It helps governments see clearly, make smarter decisions, and close gender gaps faster.
When I read the results of this years Index, I felt two things: hope and impatience. Thats right, I felt a strong sense of impatience. Impatience for my daughter, for my granddaughter, for all the young women I see in the audience today, and for all women across Europe.
It is encouraging to see that the EUs overall score has improved by over 10 points since 2010. We are going in the right direction. But at the current pace, full gender equality is still at least fifty years away. That makes me impatient, and yes, a little angry.
But it also lights a fire inside me. It makes me more determined than ever, and I hope it lights a fire in each of you here today because I refuse to accept that my granddaughter will be my age by the time we finally reach gender equality in the EU. This is not the timeline I want for her, and Im sure it is not the timeline you want either.
This comes at a time when we see a backlash against gender equality and when progress is not a straight line upwards but a rollercoaster up and down.
Women dont need a rollercoaster. They need a strong commitment in one direction — forward. It is worrying that progress is so uneven across the EU. Our women and girls should find equality wherever they go in our Union. That is why we are here today, to say loud and clear: we are committed to gender equality, and it needs to happen faster, not at a snails pace.
This is precisely why I launched the Roadmap for Womens Rights in March. It is also why we hosted a landmark event in October where all Member States, the European Parliament, EIGE, and many other stakeholders endorsed the Declaration of Principles for a Gender-Equal Society.
For me personally, this Roadmap for Womens Rights endorsement ceremony was a special moment and a moving experience. At a time when we hear so much noise from those trying to push us back, together we created a beautiful moment of unity and determination. We all felt this wave of solidarity and the feeling that pushing forward is so much stronger than the pushing back. I left that event confident and energised.
Next year, we will keep up the momentum. Ahead of International Womens Day, we will adopt the Gender Equality Strategy 2026–2030. This new Strategy will outline the concrete measures to advance gender equality, building on the principles in the Roadmap for Womens Rights.
And here is where EIGE comes in. Your Gender Equality Index, and everything EIGE does, is essential for this work. It gives us in the EU institutions and Member States the data we need to track progress and hold ourselves accountable.
This Index helps us understand the forces driving gender inequality in the EU. Take the gender pay gap, or more importantly, the gender earnings gap. The “ghost quarter” really struck me: women earn, on average, just 77% of mens incomes, meaning they work the equivalent of three months a year for free. An entire quarter.
And women in couples earn 30% less than their partners. Or look at STEM. We talk a lot about the importance of women in science and technology, yet only one in three women make up STEM graduates in the EU. And just one in five ICT specialists are women.
Maybe this doesnt surprise us anymore, but it is still disappointing to see that women continue to carry most of the unpaid care and housework, leaving them less time for leisure, career, and public life.
These are questions of fairness, and they have a direct impact on Europes economies and our competitiveness. Your Index shines a spotlight on the areas that need our attention, and it lights a spark for us to do better.
Thank you again to EIGE for your excellent work. As Commissioner for Equality, you can count on me. I will use every tool, every platform, every moment to push Europe closer to true gender equality and to do it faster than the numbers predict.
I know I can count on you because you are just as impatient as me. Together we refuse to accept that change takes half a century. Together we will make it happen sooner.
