Too few university teachers are women
Too few university teachers are women
Women are strongly under-represented in higher-education teaching in Europe,according to a report by Eurostat, the EU's statistics office. Only 26 per cent of university teachers are women. The percentages range from 9 in Germany to 36 in Finland. Moreover, female university teachers are disproportionately at the lowest grade. While 32 per cent of junior lecturers are women, only 11 per cent of professors are female. In Ireland, this figure falls to 5 per cent. Women are also under-represented in research. Some 66 per cent of government researchers and 72 per cent of researchers in higher education are men. The proportion of female researchers in higher education ranges from 12 per cent in engineering and technology to a third in medicine, the humanities and the social sciences.
A "gender and research" conference held recently in Brussels concluded that, while a lot had been done in recent years to increase the number of women in science careers, much remained to be achieved. European commissioner Philippe Busquin told the conference that progress in some forms of research depended on having more women taking part. Making scientific research more attractive to women was also of increasing importance at a time when Europe was suffering a chronic shortage of researchers that could not be filled simply by importing scientists from outside the EU. He said that no progress would be made without the political will, and called on member states to set quantitative targets for women in research.
