Prague, Jan 5 (CTK) – The share of women among scientists has been declining in the Czech Republic, though their share among university students and graduates has been rising, according to a monitoring report on the position of women in Czech science for 2014, which the Academy of Sciences (AV) released yesterday.
In 2014, women made up 27.2 percent of scientists, which was the lowest level from 2001, says the report released by the National Contact Centre for gender and science of the AV´s Institute of Sociology.
Women have long prevailed among students of Master´s programmes at universities. In 2014, they made up almost 60 percent.
Students of post-graduate programmes included 44.4 percent of women.
The prevalence of women among students, however, does not result in their corresponding representation among scientists, though the scientist community has been growing in the past years.
The number of scientists rose by 3,038 people in 2013-2014, but only 278 of them were women.
In terms of full-time jobs, women make up less than one quarter of scientists.
The updated National policy of research, development and innovations has set up the goal of raising women´s representation to 30 percent, which corresponds to the EU´s average, one of the editors of the monitoring report, Hana Tenglerova, said.
“This is the first such commitment that has been made,” she said.
The report says the “gender segregation” of particular sectors dealing with research has been growing.
“The sectors that are the largest and the steepest-growing, employ and newly admit the smallest proportion of female scientists,” the report says.
Over 40 percent of scientists work in the business sector, which admitted about 80 percent of all newcomer scientists in 2013-2014.
At the beginning of the millennium, the share of female scientists in the business sector was almost 20 percent, but it gradually dropped to 14.9 percent in 2014.
Another 40 percent of scientists are employed by universities, where women make up 34.9 percent of them, and their share has been declining since 2011.
Female scientists have the highest representation, 43 percent, in the non-profit sector, in which, however, only a half-percent of the total number of scientists work.
In the government sector, which employs 15.9 percent of the country´s scientists, women made 37.6 percent in 2014, the report says.
The number of female scientists has been declining in technical branches, sciences as well as humanities, it says.
Men prevail over women in higher academic posts and at the head of institutions. In 2014, women made up only 13 percent of the heads of research, university and other institutions, and 23.3 percent of the institutions´ broader leadership, the report says.
This is the seventh monitoring report on the position of Czech female scientists. The statistics mainly show that the situation is not developing positively, towards a bigger gender balance, Tenglerova said.
