We are turning our attention to Europe on International Women’s Day: Equality between women and men is one of the EU’s founding values. Since the European Commission’s ERA Communication of 2012, gender equality in research and innovation (R&I) as a priority has been strengthened progressively. The proportion of female doctoral students is almost balanced at European level in most EU-27 Member States and associated countries (i.e. the proportion of women was between 40 % and 60 %). However, despite this progress, significant gender gaps remain in some major fields of study. Women represent approximately one third of the total population of researchers at European level. However, there are significant differences between grades. The higher up the career ladder, the lower the proportion of women. Only around a quarter of professorships in Europe are held by women.
As one major step forward in the EU is that gender equality plans are an eligibility criterion to access Horizon Europe funding. Gender equality plans are one of the most important instruments to strengthen the way towards more gender justice and diversity in science and academia.
As part of the EU-project INSPIRE, CEWS is investigating the existence of gender equality plans by research performing organizations. We also try to make one major step forward in researching how to monitor gender equality plans across Europe with different methods. The pilot phase for testing a web crawl and a survey is currently underway. Stay tuned for more information about our methodological approaches!
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