Measuring the Female Leaky Pipeline in Academic Careers: Evidence from 21 EU Countries (2013–2022)
This paper introduces the Female Leaky Pipeline Index (FLPI), a multidimensional tool analyzing 21 EU countries from 2013 to 2022, which reveals that female attrition in academia stems from diverse structural barriers across all career stages—not just senior promotion—and identifies seven distinct national models of gender exclusion while highlighting the recent stagnation of equality gains.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
In the landscape of higher education, a persistent puzzle has long concerned researchers and policymakers: despite women earning more than half of all university degrees in Europe, they remain strikingly scarce in the highest academic ranks. This phenomenon is often described as a "leaky pipeline," a metaphor for the gradual loss of female talent as scholars move from entry-level positions to senior professorships. For decades, the primary tool used to measure this problem has been the "glass ceiling" index, which focuses almost exclusively on the very top of the hierarchy. While this approach highlights the difficulty women face in reaching the summit, it often misses the smaller, yet significant, leaks that occur at every step of the journey. If a system loses many women at the start but retains the few who remain, the glass ceiling might look improved simply because the pool of candidates has shrunk, masking the fact that the pipeline is broken at its base. Understanding where exactly these losses happen is crucial, because fixing a leak at the top requires a different strategy than fixing one at the bottom.
A team of researchers from the University of Seville has developed a new way to map this journey, moving beyond the single focus on the top rank to measure the entire career path. They created a comprehensive score, the Female Leaky Pipeline Index, which tracks the proportion of women lost at four distinct stages: entering the academic world, staying in early-career roles, advancing to intermediate positions, and finally reaching the top. By analyzing data from 21 European Union countries over a decade, from 2013 to 2022, they were able to see not just how many women are missing at the end, but exactly where they drop out along the way. Their work reveals that the problem is not a single barrier at the summit, but a series of structural gaps that vary wildly from one country to another.
The study challenges a common assumption that the main obstacle for women in academia is simply getting promoted to full professor. While the "glass ceiling" remains the single largest source of attrition, the researchers found that the second-largest source of loss occurs right at the beginning, when women first enter the academic system. In the years leading up to 2022, barriers to entry actually intensified in several countries, suggesting that the pipeline is leaking before it even begins to flow. The data shows a fragile picture of progress: between 2016 and 2018, the overall situation in Europe improved, with the index dropping from 16.3 percent to 14.2 percent. However, this gain was not sustained. By 2022, the index had crept back up to 14.9 percent, indicating that the advances made in gender equality were reversible and that the system had stalled.
Perhaps the most striking discovery is that there is no single European model of how women are excluded. The researchers grouped the 21 countries into seven distinct clusters, each with its own unique pattern of leakage. Some nations, like Cyprus and Hungary, suffer from a severe "glass ceiling" where women make it into the system but rarely reach the top. Others, such as Slovakia, present a paradoxical picture: they saw a dramatic improvement in the number of female professors, yet this came at the cost of a massive new barrier at the entry level, where the loss of female talent more than doubled. In contrast, countries like the Netherlands and France managed to reduce leaks across multiple stages simultaneously, showing that comprehensive, multi-stage interventions can work. Meanwhile, a group of Eastern European nations, including Lithuania and Romania, historically showed very low levels of leakage, but the data suggests this advantage is eroding as their academic markets become more competitive.
The researchers also identified a "Scandinavian paradox," where countries like Finland and Sweden, known for high levels of general gender equality in society, still maintain a significant glass ceiling within their universities. This finding suggests that broad social equality does not automatically translate into academic equality, likely due to specific institutional cultures and hiring practices that operate independently of the wider labor market. The study concludes that policies focused solely on helping women reach the top are insufficient. Because the leaks occur at different points for different countries, a one-size-fits-all solution will not work. Instead, effective change requires diagnosing the specific bottlenecks in each national system, whether that means fixing recruitment at the entry level, supporting mid-career progression, or breaking down the barriers at the very top. The evidence points to a clear reality: the path to gender equality in academia is not a straight line, but a complex, uneven terrain that requires targeted, sustained effort at every stage of the journey.
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