Gender Equality in Europe: The Development of the Sustainable Development Goal No. 5 Illustrated by Exemplary Cases

The inequality between genders is a problem virtually in all countries. A comparison among 28 nations of the European Union together with a data set corresponding to a population weighted average of all European Union nations is performed for the years 2006, 2010 and 2017, respectively. In order to compare the nations mutually, six indicators out of the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goal No 5 are scrutinized. Methods of Discrete Mathematics are applied as a tool to perform the comparisons methods. Partial order is an appropriate tool to inspect the role of all these six indicators to compare the nations. It is shown that an aggregation method is possible without the difficult task to introduce specific weights to the single indicators. Beyond this it is assumed that the data are associated with some uncertainty that should be taken into account. As a methodological result, we show that a special partial order is recommendable, the interval order; furthermore, a crude classification is found with Denmark at the top, Germany in the middle field and Czech Republic in a position which requires obviously some improvements. Further, applying an identical analytical methodology the development in gender equality over the period 2006 to 2017 for Denmark, Germany, and the Czech Republic was studied applying the population averaged data for the European Union as a reference point.

Automated summary

The study compares European Union countries using six gender equality indicators without specific weights, revealing Denmark at the top, Germany in the middle, and Czech Republic in need of improvement. The data suggests an aggregation method is possible without introducing specific weights to individual indicators.