International Women's Day

1,045,000 women live in Slovenia and account for 49.8% of total population. In 2019, for the first time in more than 160 years of reliable data on the population of the present territory of Slovenia, the number of men exceeded the number of women. There are only a few countries in the European Union where men outnumber women: other than Slovenia also Malta, Luxembourg and Sweden. Men outnumber women up until age 61. After this age, however, women predominate numerically.
Among all women in Slovenia there are: 

• 6% of girls under the age of 6, most of whom are enrolled in kindergartens
• 9% of elementary school girls
• 7% of upper secondary and tertiary students
• 39% of persons in employment
• 4% of the unemployed
• 29% of pensioners and
• 6% of women who are otherwise inactive.

 
Women on the labour market
A little less than a half of all employed persons are women. Among 449,000 employed women in the 4th quarter of 2020, there were 90% employees and 10% self-employed together with family workers. Women in employment have higher education than men: almost half of employed women and a little more than a quarter of employed men had tertiary education.

Women are still in the minority in leading positions, but their share in this group is slowly increasing. According to the data of the internationally comparable Labour Force Survey, 40% of managers in Slovenia in 2019 were women. With this figure, Slovenia ranked fourth among the EU-28 member states (after Latvia, Poland and Sweden).

Working from home 
An important aspect of reconciling work and family life is working part-time, as well as the possibility of working from home. 20% of employed women in Slovenia were working from home in 2019, which is slightly more than the EU average. In the EU-28, 16% of employed women were usually or sometimes working from home in 2019. The share was the highest in the Netherlands and Sweden (more than a third) and the lowest in Bulgaria (1%) and Romania (2%).



Absence from work 
In a "normal" labour market situation, most women are absent from work due to holidays, illness or injury, and due to maternity or parental leave. The category “on layoff” was more of an exception in the period before the pandemic and during the more relaxed measures in the 3rd quarter of 2020. Of all women in employment who were absent from work, 4% were on layoff.

In the first wave of the epidemic, between April and June 2020 just under a half of all women who were absent from work at the time for various reasons were on layoff. In the last quarter of 2020, in the second wave of the epidemic, their share increased again. 27% of employed women who were absent from work were on layoff. As in the 2nd quarter of 2020, this was the most common reason for absence from work. 



Reconciliation between work and family life 
Three out of four women aged 20 or more are mothers, and most of them are mothers of two children. If we compare the employment rate of women aged 15-64 with two children in European countries, Slovenia is at the top of the EU-28 among all member states. In 2019, 88% of women in Slovenia with two children were in employment, followed by Sweden in the second place with 87%.

The high employment rate of women in Slovenia is also characteristic of women who have one child or three children or more: Slovenia is one of the top three EU member states according to these two indicators. 



One third of women in the European Union who were employed and in addition took care of their families reported no major problems in reconciling work and family life in 2018. For the rest, who encountered certain obstacles in reconciliation, in most countries, including Slovenia, they reported the major one was the unpredictable work schedule.

Unemployment
As in the normal situation of previous years, the unemployment rate among women is slightly higher than among men. In the 4th quarter of 2020, 5.7% of active women and 4.6% of active men were unemployed. 



Social networks were used by a higher proportion of women than men
In 2020, digitalisation, online communication and the use of the Internet became even more important. In the first quarter (when the COVID-19 epidemic had not yet changed our lives and habits), 86% of women aged 16-74 (87% of men) used the Internet regularly. The share of women (77%) using the Internet every day or almost every day was higher than that of men (75%). The Internet is indispensable for working from home, and online shopping has become an even more commonly used way of shopping. More than two thirds of women aged 16-74 (67%) had already made an online purchase (69% of men). In 2010, fewer than a third of them had already made an online purchase.

More than three quarters (78%) of them used smartphones in the 1st quarter of 2020. Among men, the share of smartphone users was only slightly higher (81%). However, women used smartphones to a greater extent than men to send or receive e-mails, browse the Internet, and use social networks. 70% of women using smartphones (57% of men) used social networks.

A few more facts about women in Slovenia 
   

• 1,045,643 women lived in Slovenia on 1 July 2020. The mean age of women was 45.1 years (3 years more than the mean age of men), their most common names are Marija, Ana and Maja, and among those born since 2000 the most common names are Eva, Nika and Sara.
• A girl born in Slovenia in 2019 can expect (under the same living conditions) to live 84.2 years (5.7 years more than a boy born in the same year).
• In 2019, 8,895 women gave birth for the first time.
• Most women in Slovenia have upper secondary education (45%), and 29% have tertiary education (out of 100 men, 20 have tertiary education). Every year, more female students than male students receive a diploma. Women are therefore more educated than men, except among the elderly.
• According to provisional data of the annual structure of earnings statistics, in 2019, women earned on average EUR 1,790 gross per month, which is EUR 111 less than men.
• Women are mostly at greater risk of poverty than men. In 2019, the at-risk-of-poverty rate among women was 13% (among men: 10.9%). In Slovenia, women aged 65 or over were in the most difficult situation in 2019 (23% lived below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold), especially those living alone (46.8% below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold). Greater differences between women and men can be detected as early as at age 60 or older.