Women in Science and Technology

According to a report by the European Commission, 29 per cent of those employed as researchers are women. In the business and enterprise sector, the number is a dismal 18 per cent. Moreover, women are more likely to work in firms with lower R&D expenditures.
Women’s lack of participation within science and technology fields can be contributed to gender bias and barriers within hiring and promotion practices. But, the problem does not merely exist once she reaches the labour force, getting there is also a challenge; at the senior grade, women only account for 5.8 per cent in engineering and technology.
Women’s intellectual potential and their contribution to society are not being fully capitalized on. She is under-represented in influential positions where strategies are set, policies developed and future agendas determined. Threatening to exasperate the trend further.
The implications of this imbalance are of major importance to the European economy, since the EU’s research capacity will be difficult to sustain and impossible to increase without the involvement of women.
Excerpted from: She Figures 2006

Gender Sprache Englisch