The news in brief
According to Eurostat, the average pension of women aged 65 and over was 24.5% lower than that of men in the European Union in 2024 (24.9% for the median pension). The gap ranges from 5.6% in Estonia to 40.3% in Malta. The amounts are gross and include survivors' pensions.
What Eurostat says
On 25 February 2026, the statistical office of the European Union published a short note on the pension gap between women and men in 2024. Its finding fits in one sentence: among people aged 65 and over, women's average pension was 24.5% lower than men's across the Union (Eurostat, 2026).
Eurostat also presents a second calculation, based on the median, that is, the value that separates the higher half of pensions from the lower half. It is less sensitive to a few very high or very low amounts. With this measure, the gap is 24.9% (Eurostat, 2026). The two methods therefore tell the same story at the European scale.
The figures to remember
Gaps vary greatly from one country to another. For the average pension, the largest are in Malta at 40.3%, the Netherlands at 36.3% and Austria at 35.6%. The smallest are in Estonia at 5.6%, Slovakia at 8.4% and Hungary at 9.6% (Eurostat, 2026).
For the median pension, the ranking changes. The widest gaps are in Luxembourg at 43.3%, Spain at 41.1% and the Netherlands at 39.6%. The lowest are in Estonia at minus 0.3%, which means a virtually non-existent gap, even very slightly in favour of women, Hungary at 0.4% and Denmark at 2.7% (Eurostat, 2026).
Eurostat also stresses that the average and the median can move far apart in some countries. In Denmark, the gap calculated on the average exceeds the one calculated on the median by 12.9 points, followed by Belgium with 11.0 points and Hungary with 9.2 points. In other countries, it is the reverse: the median gap is clearly higher than the average gap, by 11.9 points in Spain, 10.6 points in Luxembourg and 6.5 points in Portugal (Eurostat, 2026).
How to read these results
First you need to know what this figure measures. According to Eurostat's methodological note, it is the percentage difference between the average, or median, pension income of women and that of men. The amounts are gross, that is, before deductions. They include retirement pensions, survivors' pensions paid to widows and widowers, and regular pensions from individual private schemes (Eurostat, 2026). In other words, the figure does not only compare careers: it adds up everything a person receives as a pension.
Next, a 24.5% gap does not mean that every woman receives a quarter less than her partner. It is a gap between two groups, calculated across all people aged 65 and over. It says nothing about the situation of a particular couple.
Finally, Eurostat's note describes the gap, it does not explain it. It does not detail the causes, for example the length of careers, part-time work or career breaks, and does not compare the pension systems of the countries. The differences between countries should therefore not be read as a league table of national policies without further analysis. The data also relate to the year 2024: they give a snapshot, not a trajectory.
What this changes for the reader
What follows is commentary, not part of the source. For a couple, this figure is a reminder that a decision taken early in life, such as reducing one's work for the children or to follow the other, can weigh decades later, at retirement. When one partner works less, they earn less today, but they also contribute less, and this effect appears on no account statement until the end of working life.
The useful step is to name this cost early, together, rather than discovering it at retirement. It can be offset in several ways, for example through savings in one's own name, by rebalancing assets or by a written clause, but you must first have talked about it. The rules depend on the country and on the couple's status, married or not, and a notary or a pension adviser can shed light on your specific situation.
This news item does not say who should do what. It simply gives a figure, at the European scale, for a gap that many couples have never discussed together. Talking about it is neither a sign of mistrust nor an accusation: it is a way of protecting both people.
What our main page adds
Our main page explains how a couple can prevent this gap from widening. It shows that money arguments mostly come back because nobody has ever said what money means to each person, and that financial disagreements predict divorce more than the level of income does. It compares three ways of sharing expenses: everything in common, a strict fifty-fifty split, or in proportion to income, which it considers the most balanced when incomes differ, with a joint account for shared costs and a personal account each. It devotes a passage to unpaid work, whose cost in retirement can be offset by savings in one's own name or a rebalancing of assets, and recalls that exclusive control of money amounts to economic abuse. See the page on couples and money.
Going further
This news item is part of a broader topic, which our page Money and couples covers in detail.