The majority of women in Austria have a high level of education and are firmly in the workforce. At 72.3 percent, the proportion of women is well above the EU average (68.6 percent). While 1.55 million women were still employed in 1994, by 2020 there were already 1.99 million. This corresponds to an increase of 28.4 percent (source Statistics Austria 2021). That’s the equivalent of 259.9 million hours worked by Austria’s female entrepreneurs in 2020. The women generated a tax payment of 8.33 billion euros.
Women are also in the fast lane in the area of (training) education: They are now ahead of the game when it comes to high school diplomas and further academic training. In this context, Statistics Austria speaks of the “academic triumph of women”. Some numbers to back up this claim: While in 2001 only 241,004 women were educated in higher education, in 2020 the number had risen to 612,846. This corresponds to an increase of around 154 percent. Despite the good education, there is still a lot of catching up to do in many areas: For example, the proportion of women among commercial managers is just 13.3 percent.
