How has Europe’s gender wealth gap evolved, and why?

While women in Europe have made impressive gains in education and labour market participation, our new study reveals that these advances have not translated into equal wealth: the gender wealth gap widened from 2010-2021 among the middle class and the richest individuals.

Using European Central Bank data, we focused on single, working-age individuals to isolate gender effects. We found no significant gender gap in average wealth across the European Union. However, when controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, a clear distributional pattern emerged: less-prosperous women and men are broadly similar in wealth terms, but the gap widens sharply among the middle class and the most affluent groups.

Men are more likely to own property, run businesses and invest in higher-risk, higher-return assets, all of which contribute to faster wealth accumulation. Women, in contrast, tend to hold safer, lower-return assets such as deposits. Although women surpass men in educational attainment, this advantage does not offset differences in investment behaviour, self-employment and risk tolerance.

We also uncovered large differences between EU countries. In some, including Czechia and Lithuania, women have nearly closed or even reversed the wealth gap. In others, such as France and the Netherlands, men remain substantially ahead. These findings could reflect differing institutional settings, labour market histories, inheritance regimes and cultural norms.

Taken together, these results point to a deeper problem: although Europe is narrowing the gender gap in employment and earnings, a new divide is opening up in asset ownership and capital accumulation. Without policies that encourage women to build wealth, for example, through financial literacy initiatives and support for female entrepreneurship, achieving gender equality in wealth holdings will remain out of reach.

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