3.7 million women held managerial positions in 2023
In 2023, 3.7 million women in the EU held a managerial position, up from 3.1 million in 2014, according to the EU Labour Force Survey, the main source for labour market statistics in EU.
This means that although women represented almost half of all employed people in the EU (46.4%), they were under-represented amongst managers (34.8%) in 2023. In 2014, women accounted for 45.8% of people in employment and took up 31.8% of the managerial positions.
Among the EU countries, the largest share of women in managerial positions in 2023 was recorded in Sweden (43.7%), followed by Latvia (42.9%) and Poland (42.3%), while Luxembourg (22.2%), Croatia (23.8%) and Czechia (27.4%) observed the lowest shares.
Since 2014, the overall number of women in managerial positions in the EU has grown by 3.1 percentage points (pp) and 20 countries have seen an increase.
Cyprus (+10.5 pp), Malta (+8.3 pp) and Sweden (+6.5 pp) reported the largest increases, while the share of female managers fell the most in Hungary and Slovenia (both -2.6 pp) and Lithuania (-1.7 pp).
Source dataset: lfsa_egais
This article is part of a series to mark International Women’s Day, celebrated on 8 March.
For more information
- Statistics Explained article on employment - annual statistics
- Thematic section on employment and unemployment (lfs)
- Thematic section on sustainable development goals
- Database on sustainable development goals
- She Figures 2024 interactive report
- Webinar on gender statistics
Methodological notes
Managerial positions are defined according to the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08). Managers plan, direct, coordinate and evaluate the overall activities of enterprises, governments and other organisations, or of organisational units within them, and formulate and review their policies, laws, rules and regulations.
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