Women Remain a Minority in Scientific Research

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The She Figures data collection is undertaken every three years as a joint venture of the Scientific Culture and Gender Issues Unit of the Directorate-General for Research of the European Commission and the group of Statistical Correspondents of the Helsinki Group.

The major findings and trends put forward by She Figures 2009 can be summarised as follows:

Women in scientific research remain a minority, accounting for 30% of researchers in the EU in 2006.

In the EU, their proportion is growing faster than that of men (6.3% annually over 2002-2006 compared with 3.7% for men); the same goes for the proportion of women among scientists and engineers (6.2% annually compared with 3.7% for men).

On average in the EU-27, women represent 37% of all researchers in the Higher Education Sector, 39% in the Government Sector and 19% in the Business Enterprise Sector, but in all three sectors there is a move towards a more gender-balanced research population.

In the EU-27, 45% of all PhD graduates were women in 2006; they equal or outnumber men in all broad fields of study, except for science, mathematics and computing (41%), and engineering, manufacturing and construction (25%).

Over the period 2002-2006, there has been an increase in the overall number of female researchers in almost all fields of science in the EU-27: the most positive growth figures characterised the fields of the medical sciences, the humanities, engineering and technology and the social sciences.

The highest shares of female researchers in the Business Enterprise Sector are in the fields of the agricultural and medical sciences and the lowest shares in engineering and technology.

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