Risk of poverty for women in Latvia on a rise: especially in 65 years age group

This year Latvia is ranked 19th among the 27 Member States of the European Union (EU) in the European Gender Equality Index developed by the European Institute for Gender Equality, according to Ministry of Welfare.

Latvia scored 62.6 points in this assessment, which is 1.1 points better than last year. In turn, since 2010, when the index survey was conducted for the first time, Latvia’s rating has improved by 7.4 points.

The best performance at EU level is in the field of work, where Latvia ranks eighth with 77.5 points. Since 2021, Latvia has climbed six positions in this area, which is the second largest increase in the EU, according to the ministry.

Improvements can also be seen in the assessment of the field of knowledge, where there has been an increase of seven points since 2021. However, as other EU Member States have made faster progress, Latvia’s rating remains unchanged and it ranks last in the EU, the ministry reports.

The ministry emphasizes that since 2022, the participation of women in research funding organizations has increased rapidly – 86% of board members in these organizations are women, which is the highest rate in the EU.

According to the index, gender inequality in Latvia is particularly pronounced in areas such as money and time. There is also a marked inequality between the involvement of women and men in the performance of care duties. 41% of women surveyed in Latvia are involved in the care of children, grandchildren, parents or relatives with disabilities, while only 24% of men do the same activities. Likewise, women are twice as likely to be involved in cooking and doing homework on a daily basis (73% of the time) than men who engage in these activities 35% of the time.

Money inequality, on the other hand, is characterised by at-risk-of-poverty differences between women and men. From 2010 to 2021, the risk of poverty for women in Latvia has increased from 20% to 27%, while for men it has remained unchanged at 20%.

Two years ago, the greatest gender gap in this area was observed among people living alone – 54% of women living alone are at risk of poverty, which is 20 percentage points higher than men.

Older women and women with lower levels of education also have a particularly high risk of poverty. For example, almost every second woman in Latvia, or 46% of women aged 65 and over, has been at risk of poverty, the ministry explains.

The Gender Equality Index is a tool that measures progress on gender equality in the EU. The index is made up of 31 indicators on the situation of women and men in six areas – work, money, knowledge, time, power and health. The index uses a scale from 1 to 100 points, where “1” means complete lack of equality and “100” means complete equality.

This year, the index includes two additional areas – the area of interrelated inequalities and the area of violence against women, but they do not have an impact on the final assessment of countries. The area of interrelated inequalities highlights gender inequalities in terms of age, disability, education and migration status, while violence against women identifies and analyses the most common and most criminalised violence against women in the EU.

LM points out that a broader analysis of the prevalence of violence in EU Member States will be published as a separate issue of the thematic focus at the beginning of next year. This publication will include an analysis of different national laws and policies, public attitudes and access to services for victims of violence, assessing the situation in EU member states.