Six per cent of European engineering students are women. In Ireland, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, they account for 5 per cent of full science professorships.
These were some of the statistics presented at the Women and Science conference, organised by the European Commission and Parliament last week in Brussels. However, the full gender breakdown in science, engineering and technology in EU member-states is not available.
Hilary Rose, professor emerita social policy at Bradford University, said inadequate statistics carried their own negative message: "The state or supra-state organisation does not see the problem as needing effective policy, administrative action and monitoring. Increased pressure for adequate statistics, both from the OECD as the oldest international provider of research policy data and from Eurostat is urgently needed."
Some countries and disciplines fared better than others, but even where women had equal or more than equal access into given disciplines, the distribution of recognition and reward is skewed toward men, she added. Ms Edith Cresson, the Commission member responsible for research, innovation, education, training and youth, outlined plans to increase the proportion of women participating in the fifth Framework programme. She also proposed an "observatory" to establish statistics on the position of women and science.