Gender employment gap by NUTS1, 2015

I never really thought that there would still be a higher number of men employed than women

That's because this map shows the employment rate, i.e. the % of working age population that is employed. This means that housewives and anyone not actively seeking a job are also included. In unemployment measures they are generally excluded and the gender gap is usually lower.

Also am I the only one who thought that "female employment as a percentage of male employment" is a weird statistic parameter? Why not just take data of how many men and how many women are employed are compare?

Measures defined as ratios are just more reliable. This way you can map the parameter "gender equality" to a 0-1 range from least to most equal and you can use it as a coefficient in a model. You could have also subtracted the two percentages but then the value would be inverted and you'd have to use the absolute i.e. eq = 1 - |f.emp-m.emp|. This is unreliable since you might get negative values at some point if female employment surpasses the male one. With the ratio you'd simply get a value >1.

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