According to the latest Eurostat data, the EU gender gap in cultural employment fell from 6.4% points in 2015 to 0.8% points in 2024.
This marked the smallest gender employment gap in the EU cultural sector in 10 years.
In 16 European Unions, women’s share of cultural employment exceeded men’s share. Of these, Latvia and Estonia had the biggest differences, with 32.6 and 24.2 percentage points in favor of women, respectively.
In contrast, in 11 EU countries, males had a higher share of cultural employment, with the highest shares recorded in Spain and Italy.
Greece, Romania and Austria saw little gender gap in cultural employment.
Approximately 27.7% of women in cultural employment were self-employed, compared to 35.6% of men.
Meanwhile, 81.9% of men worked full-time, while 70% of women were significantly less valuable.
Although gender differences in cultural employment have been significantly narrowed, this balance has not yet been reflected in revenue.
In 26 of the 27 EU countries, men earn more than women in this sector.
In 2022, men’s total hourly income in cultural employment was 13.5% higher than women in the EU, on average.
The most disproportionate sector is “printing and replication of recorded media,” with a quarter of women paying less than 12.4% of men.
This category was followed by “Motion Pictures, Video, TV Program Production, Sound Recording and Music Publishing Activities,” with 23% of women being 15.1% of men being.
There is also an unbalanced distribution of decision-making positions between men and women.
Over the past decade, the proportion of women in managerial positions has always been less than 50%.
How do different genders participate in cultural activities?
Women participated in cultural activities more than men of all ages than men, except those over the age of 65 in 2022.
The participation rate of women exceeded that of men from 17 of the 26 EU countries.
Denmark had the highest participation rate for women (79.6%), while Luxembourg had the highest rate for men (77.5%).
Bulgaria is the country with the lowest participation rate in both women and men in cultural activities, with 20.5% for women and 18.7% for men.
This is followed by Romania (21.8% for women and 22.7% for men) and Croatia (33.6% for women and 31.1% for men).
“This indicates that despite the small prevalence of women participating in cultural activities in most EU countries, no strong inequality has been observed in the region,” the Eurostat study states.
