Slower than it appears? A statistical representation of the evolution of gender equality in Europe

Since the 1990s, social and media interest in gender (in)equality has spawned several synthetic measurement projects. Compared with the rest of the world, the specific characteristics of European countries and the European Union’s commitment to gender equality justify a unique initiative in this area: the Gender Equality Index (GEI) of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE). However, scholars have raised critical concerns regarding the theoretical foundations of the GEI, its metric design, and other aspects of its construction. In particular, three technical features have sparked debate: the correction coefficient applied to raw equality scores, the use of geometric means to aggregate indicators, and the inclusion of certain indicators that are not updated as frequently as desired. In this article, we describe and quantify how these three methodological choices influence the portrayal of the speed at which EU countries advance towards full equality between men and women.