The latest Europe-wide survey on gender equality presents campaigners with a problem. They could, if they chose, cheer the fact that their campaigns have achieved so much, for most women across Europe say they have never experienced discrimination. Or, the campaigners could point to the large minority that feel they are disadvantaged in a man’s world.

The survey, commissioned jointly by the European Commission and the European Parliament, questioned 35,000 women across all 27 EU member states. Asked whether they have ever been treated unfairly because of their gender, 32 percent said “yes”, while 67 percent said “no”.

Does that average conceal wide variations between different countries? Not as much as might be expected. The country with the highest “yes” vote is Sweden (43 percent), followed by Greece (40 percent) and Finland (38 percent). There is, then, not a single country in the EU where most women say they have experienced discrimination.

Neither is there any country where the proportion falls below 20 percent. The lowest “yes” proportions were found in Malta and Portugal (both 22 percent), and Hungary and the Netherlands (both 23 percent).

One striking thing is that the national differences in perception that do exist seem to have little connection with the objective differences in women’s opportunities. One useful indicator is the gender balance in each country’s national parliaments. In Sweden and Finland, more than 40 percent of MPs are women, yet they have a higher-than-average share of women who say they have been treated unfairly. Malta and Hungary have the lowest proportions of women MPs in the EU (9 percent and 11 percent respectively) – but also come at the bottom of the survey’s women-discrimination table.

In other words, subjective feelings do not always match objective reality. That is not to say subjective feelings are wrong, in a Marxist “false consciousness” sense. Fairness and unfairness are as much about human perceptions as economic, political and social statistics. However, the gap between subjective feelings and objective reality does remind us that to head down the road to justice is to embark on a bumpy journey.

It may well be that, in some EU countries, the more that is done to achieve gender equality, the more the process is likely to arouse hitherto dormant feelings of injustice. In which case, future surveys may find that in the countries that do most to ensure equal rights for women, the numbers of women saying they are treated unfairly is likely to rise, rather than fall. If, in a few years time, the number of women in Malta and Hungary saying they are treated unfairly rises to around 30 percent, this is more likely to indicate two countries actively addressing the issue of gender equality, rather than a rise in the actual level of discrimination.