The coronavirus pandemic has caused “big losses” for gender equality in Europe, with few gains, according to an index published Thursday by the European Institute for Gender Equality, a European Union initiative.

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       The Gender Equality Index assigned the European Union 68 points out of 100, according to its scoring system, which evaluates gender equality according to a range of metrics. This means an improvement of 0.6 points compared with 2020, and a gain of 4.9 points since 2010.

       However, the report warns that even that minimal fraction of a point of progress registered year-over-year is threatened by the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on women.

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       The scores are mostly based on data from 2019 and therefore don’t fully capture the impact of the coronavirus crisis on gender equality, although the report does include evidence on the pandemic’s negative impact on women in key areas.

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       “Europe has made fragile gains in gender equality. But big losses are emerging as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic fallout is lasting longer for women, while life expectancy for men has dropped,” Carlien Scheele, the institute’s director, said in the report.

       The index, which has been produced since 2013 with the aim of providing data to inform E.U. policymaking, measures progress in gender equality in six core domains: health, power, work, money, time and knowledge, and two additional ones: violence against women and intersectional inequalities.

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       Progress in gender equality in the region between 2010 and 2019 was mostly driven by significant advances in the “power” category, with greater gender balance on company boards and in the realm of politics, according to the report.

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       However, advancement in other areas continues to lag significantly, particularly in the “time” domain, which has a negative impact in the scoring. This category, which covers individuals’ participation in care and leisure activities, takes into account that women have spent more hours doing unpaid labor during the pandemic, either taking care of children when schools were closed or caring for the elderly.

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       A hard-hit domain was work, with some groups showing large gender gaps in full-time employment. The largest gap “is between women and men taking unpaid care of children,” the report says. “Both reflect the negative influence of gender roles and stereotypes on women’s participation in the labor market, and thus on their economic independence and empowerment.”

       The pandemic has not only exposed gender divisions in the job market but has also had greater negative effects on employment opportunities for women than for men. And those effects are likely to linger longer, “as a result of labor market gender segregation and the highly unequal distribution of unpaid care duties,” the report says.

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       When it comes to domestic violence, the report warns that a dearth of data makes comparisons difficult. But it notes that the pandemic prompted lockdowns and increased time indoors, which resulted in an uptick in domestic violence against women. Women in disadvantaged groups such as older women, women and girls with disabilities and migrant women are at higher risk. The European Institute for Gender Equality also reports increased demand for support services for victims of domestic violence.

       The index shows that, at the current pace, it will take nearly three generations to achieve gender equality in the region, and the pandemic could hamper progress further.