She works hard for the money

In yet another Eurostat report, Estonia has ended up on the podium once again - albeit this time for a good reason. It has taken the bronze in the race to see which member state employs the most women.

Only beaten to the top spot by Sweden and Slovenia, Estonia registered unemployment among 'working-age' women (aged 25-54 for the purposes of this survey) in 2006 of just 14.3%, almost 10% lower than the EU average. The country scored even better in the 55-64 range, coming second.

Unfortunately, on the back of this good-for-equal-opportunities news comes the revelation in a different report of the stark contrast that remains between the amount women in Estonia are paid for what they do and the amount men are paid for doing the same thing: on average, female workers receive 28% less.

Add to this the findings of another report again (this one from Eurofound) that simply working in Estonia doubles your risk of occupational health problems compared to other EU countries and perhaps the country doesn't have all that much to crow about: they might have more than the average number of women in work, but they are likely to receive a third less pay for what they do than the men folk and twice as likely to do themselves an injury in the process.