Malta continued to close its employment gender gap over the past five years, according to a new report issued by the European Commission. Malta still has the lowest level of employed females in the EU.

The Commission's report on Equality Between Women And Men In 2008 shows that, in 2006, the number of Maltese women aged 15 to 64 in employment rose to 34.9 per cent, almost three percentage points over the situation in 2001. As a consequence, the gender gap between men and women in employment fell to 39.6 per cent from 44.1 per cent in 2001.

Despite this rapid improvement, Malta is still topping the EU statistics when it comes to the level of female employment and gender gap.

The closest to Malta is Italy, where the number of women in employment in 2006 stood at 46.3 per cent followed by Greece at 47.4 per cent. On the other hand, Denmark is the most advanced society in this sector with 73.4 per cent of all women aged 15 to 64 in employment.

The report also gives details about the pay gap difference between women and men in employment in 2006 and here Malta ranks best.

In fact, Malta has the lowest pay difference between men and women when calculated on an average gross hourly earnings. In Malta the difference is just three per cent when the EU average is 15 per cent. The highest pay difference in 2006 resulted in Estonia at 25 per cent.

According to the Commission's analysis, overall, women are continuing to drive employment growth in Europe but remain disadvantaged on the labour market in relation to men. The report shows that, despite higher educational attainment, women continue to be employed less and paid less than men.

The female average employment rate in the EU now stands at 57.2 per cent, or 3.5 points above its 2000 level, compared with a less than one point rise in the rate of male employment over the same period.

Similarly, the rise in the rate of employment of women over the age of 55 has been significantly faster than that of men and now stands at 34.8 per cent, a 7.4 point increase on 2000.

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