The institute shared the figures in a statement on Wednesday, to mark International Women’s Day, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
‘Women make up 43 percent of Polish executives’
“The EU-wide gender disparity when it comes to executive positions is relatively small in Poland,” the think tank said.
“Women account for 43 percent of executives in Poland, compared with the EU average of 35 percent,” it added, citing data from the European bloc’s statistics agency, Eurostat.
The PIE reported that the figure is even higher in Latvia, at 46 percent, while women make up 43 percent of executives in Sweden and 41 percent in Estonia.
At the other end of the scale, only 21 percent of executives are female in Cyprus, 22 percent in Luxembourg and 26 percent in the Netherlands.
In all, 459,000 women occupied executive positions in Poland in 2021, including 126,000 in the trade sector, followed by public administration and manufacturing, according to the PIE.
The proportion of women on the boards of Poland’s listed companies is 24 percent, below the EU average of 32 percent, the think tank also reported.
New study on the financial independence of Polish women
Meanwhile, a new report by the online currency-exchange platform, Walutomat.pl, out on International Women’s Day, explores the current labour-market standing of Polish women, their economic situation, entrepreneurship and views on money, the PAP news agency reported.
Entitled A Financially Independent Polish Woman, the study reports that “according to estimates, one in five women has no stable source of income and is therefore dependent on someone else’s money,” while “the gender gap is very much alive and women have fewer opportunities to advance their career and fewer of them are managing businesses.”
Closing gender pay gap in CEE to take 107 years
The report added that globally, women earn 8.7 percent less than men in the same jobs, and closing the gender pay gap across the world will take 132 years, and 107 years in central and eastern Europe, including in Poland.
“There is an enduring belief that women have lower competences due to motherhood, while certain social roles are deeply entrenched in our mentality. All these factors undermine the financial independence of women or their willingness to become investors,” the study said.
Walutomat.pl’s Marta Sajnóg commented: “It is our hope that growing awareness of these problems will mark the beginning of a revolution, or at least a discussion about equalising opportunities for men and women in the work sphere. We would like this issue to be taken up increasingly often and at increasingly great length.”
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, walutomat.pl