The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), founded in 2010, is an autonomous European Union (EU) body that aims to strengthen and promote gender equality in the EU. Its main task is to collect and analyse data, provide research, and measure the state of gender equality in the EU. Every year, the Institute publishes the Gender Equality Index, which assigns Member States a score ranging from 1 to 100 points, where 1 represents total inequality and 100 represents total equality. The Index is based on their achievements in six areas: work, money, knowledge, time, power, and health.

According to the 2024 Report (the Index results published in 2024 refer to data mostly from 2022), Italy takes 14^th spot on the Gender Equality Index, with a score of 69.2 points out of 100. It represents a big improvement compared to the results of the first Index from 2010. Italy’s score has increased by 15.9 points, which is the largest overall increase among all Member States. Unfortunately, Italy still falls behind the score of the EU as a whole, which is 71.0 points. 

The health category is the one in which Italy has the highest score – 89.3 points. Worth mentioning is also the category of power. Italy made a great development, raising its score by 3.8 points since the 2021 evaluation, and by more than 40 points since the first Index. The lowest score (61 points) was assigned to the category of knowledge. 

Every year, EIGE also chooses the thematic focus of the Gender Equality Index. The 2024 one is dedicated to violence against women. The EU places emphasis on continuous cases of physical and sexual violence and femicide. In the Report, it is reported that 31% of women in Italy experienced physical and/or sexual violence by any perpetrator in the previous 12 months. However, the authors of the Report also noticed a positive change in the Italian law. Since 2023, the United Free Autonomous Journalists challenged harmful gender-based violence narratives in national and local newspapers to promote responsible reporting.