Factors determining the degree of gender equality within the European Union

This paper aims to identify the major determinants of the structural differences in gender equality for EU countries, using tools from partial order theory on a system of 6 indicators, pertaining to the Sustainable Development Goal 5 “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”. The paper analyzes the gender equality partial orders, among EU countries, for years 2006, 2010 and 2017. Performing a sensitivity analysis, the pay gap indicator was disclosed as the most relevant source of differences across European nations, for each of the three years considered. Subsequently the paper focuses on the temporal evolution of gender equality in three specific countries, i.e., Denmark, Germany and the Czech Republic, studying which elementary dimensions has the strongest impact on its dynamics. Interestingly it turns out that, in different countries, different indicators play the major role (related to women’s political representation, for Denmark and Germany, and to care giving, for Czech Republic). These sensitivity analyses are performed using posetic tools, to avoid the possible information loss of an aggregative procedures, involving the computation of composite indicators. This constitutes a major methodological contribution of the paper.