Brussels, 06/06/2002 (Agence Europe) - A new report published on Wednesday by the European Commission confirmed the under-representation of women in the research sector. Compiled by the Helsinki Group, the report is based on the following statistics and establishes some comparisons (not always easy) of the different national profiles of Member States and candidate countries. It backs up the view of the European Commission for strengthening the representation of women in research, including the decision-making structures, where they are particularly under-represented. The report was released in Madrid during a seminar organised by the Spanish Presidency on the subject of "Women and Science: promoting women in the scientific sector".
The report demonstrates that women are discriminated against in all scientific sectors but increasingly so as they ascend the hierarchy. While they account for more than 50% of the population who have been to school, women only account for 31.7% of researchers in higher education in the EU (due in particular to the under-representation of German women: less than one researcher in four is a woman). The country where women have the highest representation is Ireland (46.2%) followed by Portugal (44.7%) and Greece (44.3%), which would appear to suggest that women have greater access to research posts in these countries where research structures are relatively new, while scientific institutions, particularly decision-making structures remain in the hands of men in countries where there are older research traditions. In candidate countries, the situation might appear to be significantly better, but this would be to ignore the outmoded laboratories and salaries and lack of financial means. High representation of women could therefore be put down to the brain drain of male researchers to Western Europe and the USA. The incidence of women in other research sectors also varies considerably: high representation in medical and social sciences (in Ireland they account for 67.6% in medical research) but remain particularly under-represented in the more technical research fields.