Social Economic Inequality from the Gender Perspective: Lithuanian Case

Gender equality as one of the main values of the European Union still has not been totally reached in none of the European Union countries. The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) announced the Gender Equality Index for the year of 2012 for the EU 28 countries, which was only 52.9 out of 100. Persisting inequality between women and men deepens the social economic inequality of the society and serves for the development of such negative trends as persisting pay gap and society polarization, which lead to diminishing middle class and growing gap between the rich and the poor. Due to prevailing stereotypes of gender roles, the group of women is constantly facing bigger social economic challenges caused by, firstly, stereotypical choice of education/profession, secondly, vertical and horizontal segregation of labor market and thirdly, less income, which in the long term forms less old age pensions for women. This research aims to analyze what is the influence of gender inequality to society’s social economic inequality and to explore the different positions of women and men in the fields of income, material deprivation, vulnerability and resilience as well as to suggest recommendations for the reduction of gender inequality as inseparable part of social economic inequality and for the effective use of women’s labor force as one of the hidden potentials for economic growth. The background of this research is theoretical framework and empirical evidence based on a sociological survey methodology (questionnaire). It is found that position of Lithuanian women is worse than men and requires special measures to be taken in the fields of income, material deprivation, vulnerability reduction and other spheres.