The average pension for women aged 65 or over in the European Union (EU) was 24.5 per cent lower than that of men in 2024, according to data from Eurostat.

The data revealed that the highest average pension gap between genders was observed in Malta (40.3 per cent), followed closely by the Netherlands (36.3 per cent) and Austria (35.6 per cent).

In contrast, the pension gap was smallest in Estonia (5.6 per cent), followed by Slovakia (8.4 per cent) and Hungary (9.6 per cent).

In addition to the calculations based on average pensions, Eurostat also published a gender gap using median pension values, with the median pension for women in the EU being 24.9 per cent lower than that for men.

The country with the largest gap in median pensions was Luxembourg (43.3 per cent), followed by Spain (41.1 per cent) and the Netherlands (39.6 per cent).

The country with the smallest median gap, which was the same as the average pension gap, was Estonia, recording -0.3 per cent.

Hungary followed with a median gap of 0.4 per cent, and Denmark had a median gap of 2.7 per cent.

The figures showed that when comparing the average and median terms, the largest differences were recorded in Denmark, where the gap in average pensions was 12.9 percentage points higher than that in median pensions.

Belgium recorded the second-highest gap between the average and median terms at 11 percentage points, and Hungary placed third (9.2 percentage points).

However, Eurostat reported that the opposite was the case for some countries, with the gap in median pensions being higher than that in average pensions, with Spain ranking the highest (-11.9 percentage points).

Spain was followed by Luxembourg (-10.6 percentage points) and Portugal (6.5 percentage points).  

Eurostat explained that the gender average pension gap is defined as the percentage difference between women’s and men’s average (gross) pension income, while the gender pension median gap is defined as the percentage difference between women’s and men’s median (gross) pension income. 

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