Science remains predominantly a man’s world

• © UNESCO
• Cover of the Report

Only one researcher out of four is a woman according to the International Report “Science, Technology and Gender” that UNESCO will launch on 10 November during the Science Forum in Budapest. Ernesto Fernández Polcuch, programme specialist for science and technology at the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (Montreal, Canada) presents in this interview some of the most relevant findings of the Report.

What does this Report bring to light?

This Report presents the results of the first serious statistical survey on the relation between science, technology and gender at a global level. It allows us to come to various conclusions. First, the participation of women in science at the higher levels of education has increased in the past ten years in most regions of the world. However, once they have finished their studies, only 25% of researchers in science and technology are women and 75% men.
Second, findings vary from one region to another. Whereas Central Asia and, in general, the post-Soviet countries have good gender parity, as do many countries in Latin America, the same cannot be said of Africa and the rest of Asia. It is also clear that in the major part of Europe, above all in Western Europe, research is still predominantly male.


How can this be explained?
There are different reasons. In the case of Western Europe, for example, many researchers work for industry, where the percentage of women is low. Therefore, the European Union has pinpointed this as a specific problem.


But isn’t the desertion of science a general problem, without distinction of gender?

It is true that science attracts fewer students, but this is a trend and not yet reflected in the total number of researchers. At the university level, gender parity is much better than at the research level. Percentage wise, there are more women science students than researchers. After their studies, women change directions. In terms of statistics this is reflected in a “scissor diagram”: worldwide, the number of women decreases at the higher levels of scientific research. In certain countries, in the field of science, very few women are heads of department or academics, whereas there are more female than male graduates.


Are there differences with respect to salaries?

The data we have are not reliable enough to assert this. In general, when countries have strong public structures in the field of research, salary differences due to gender hardly occur, but this is not the case with industrial research. What we can say, is that working conditions in scientific research do not attract women. There are two reasons: problems of discrimination and problems with work organization: the work days do not accommodate family life.

Why do certain countries have good results?
Results have to be read with caution, because the data are general and don’t reflect different levels. For example, Argentina has a parity of 50%, but in the higher levels of scientific careers women are under-represented. The researcher’s status in society also enters into consideration: in certain countries, it is prestigious to be a researcher, whereas in others, above all in less developed countries, the profession is less well perceived. This is also related to salary levels. In countries where salaries of researchers are very low, the profession tends to be the second profession in the family, not the main breadwinner’s. When this is the case, it progressively becomes a female profession, without being the consequence of true parity and equal opportunity.


Which fields display the greatest disparities between men and women?
In the field of engineering, there are few women. However in biology and medicine, there are as many women as men, if not more. In the computer sciences also there are more men…the information society is still a society of men.

• 06-11-2007