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It is important to note here that there is no guarantee that women will
necessarily increase their share in particular disciplines with time – figures
show a decline, for example, among computer science graduates over time
in both Sweden and the UK.
Senior management positions in universities
Scientists often reach the top management positions in universities such as
Rector or Vice Chancellor: the lack of women in senior grades in science
therefore affects their prospects of achieving such high office.  Recent
figures show the paucity of women at the helm of European universities.
This is a particular issue in France where, in 1999, women are a mere 4.5%
(4/88) of University Presidents.   In Germany, women comprise 5.0% of
Rectors (11 out of 222, in 1998); 5.3% of Presidents (4/75), 11.2% of Pro-
rectors (41/365), 17% of Vice Presidents (19/111) and 10.8% of Chancellors
(30/277).  In Spain, in 1999, women comprised 1.6% (1/61) of Rectors and
9.8% (6/61) of Vice-rectors.  In the Netherlands, 5% (2/40) of university
boards (President, Vice President, Rector) are female.  In Sweden, by
contrast, 18% (7/38) of rectors are female.  In the UK, 5% of Vice
Chancellors (5/104) are women.  One fifth of Cambridge colleges (6/30)
are headed by a woman compared with 15% of Oxford colleges (6/39).
Overall, there is a dearth of women among the top management posts in
universities.  This has a number of consequences.  Women are absent in
debates shaping policy (discussed in Chapter 5); they are not there to
provide a challenge to the status quo and modus vivendi and their absence
means there are few role models for women coming up the system.
Research institutes
The gender imbalance in research institutes is similar to that in the
universities.  Thus, they display the familiar pyramid structure, with women
occupying a greater percentage of the lower grades and relatively few of the
top positions.  Hence, the percentage of female senior staff in research
institutes is usually comparable to or indeed less than the corresponding
number given for full professors in the universities.  Variation depends on
the focus of the research institute and on the country in which it is located.
Women in science today
Waiting for equality
One of the most common explanation of the under representation of women in the
top grades of the scientific careers is that women are less numerous because they
entered the world of scientific research more recently than men.  But is it true?  We
examined a group of 1,088 senior researchers (78% men, 22% women) at the Italian
National Research Council, all of whom entered the position in the same year: 1988.
The senior researchers had the same mean age, 42.5 years.  The aim of the study was to
see how many men and women were promoted to the top grade – research director -
after 10 years.  We found that 26% of men as compared to only 12.8% of women arrived
at the top, thus confirming that despite having the same starting point, men are more
likely to be promoted than women.  The imbalance was greatest at the top career grade:
among the 240 research directors, 88% were men and 12% women.
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Science policies in the European Union
At the top levels, the contrast between research institutes in France and
Germany is striking.  In 1997, in France, 21.7% (5/23) of DRO positions
(the top level) at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research
(INSERM) and 8.8% (14/159) of the DRCE (directeurs de recherche de
classe exceptionnelle) positions (the top level) in Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) were held by women.  By contrast, in
Germany, in 1997, women occupied only 4.5% (6/134) of the ‘leiter’
positions and 1.6% (7/426) at the C4 level.
1
Figures on the gender distribution of group leaders (or principal
investigators) at different international and national research institutes in
physics and life sciences are also striking.  At the European Laboratory for
Particle Physics (CERN), 5% of group leaders, 7% of deputy group leaders
and 10% of section leaders are female.  At the Italian National Research
Council (CNR), women make up 6% of the Directors of CNR institutes,
Study Centres and National Research Groups.  At the European Molecular
Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, and at the Medical Research Council
(MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, 12% of the group
leaders are female.  At the Basle Institute of Immunology and the Imperial
Cancer Research Fund in London, around 20% of the group leaders are
female.  In the Max Planck Society, just under a quarter (24%) of ‘junior
groups’ are headed by women.  Similarly, at the Pasteur Institute in Paris,
women head 23.9% of research units, while 2/9 of the department heads are
female.  And in three, newly founded life sciences institutes in Portugal,
45.2% of the principal investigators are female.
Scientists in industry
This is an area where it is extremely difficult to get figures.  Let us take just
one Member State and a single discipline: What do we know about women
engineers in France? Surveys by the National Council of French Engineers
and Scientists (CNISF) include a question on gender, and the particular
situation of French women engineers has been analysed by the Association
of French women engineers (AFFI).  In 1995, 22.7% of the degrees awarded
by the Engineering High Schools were given to women.  Women engineers
are more likely to go into teaching, research and development than their
male colleagues, they are less likely to go into civil engineering and
construction.  It is impossible to get any data on women with a scientific
education who are now leaders of scientific companies.  French researchers
in universities and large institutions are state employees; very few of them
start their own company, least of all women.
The best rough estimate of the proportion of top positions in industry
occupied by women in the EU, drawing on a range of sources is around 3%.
Of the Member State statistical offices that we asked, only that of the
Netherlands was able to provide an exact figure (1.5%).  Information giving
the percentage of women in senior management in a few companies in
Germany is in Appendix IV.  Again, the need for systematic data collection
for industry at both national and EU levels cannot be overemphasised.
Equality and Quality in
Enterprises
New management methods
imported from USA are now
been introduced into a certain
number of multinational
companies, and are favourable
to women’s employment.
Companies like Schlumberger
and Motorola have become
conscious that their customer
base in the twenty-first century
will not be restricted to white
men. Hence they have started
to recruit women engineers and
appreciate their talents.
Deutsche Telekom is now
linking ‘Equality of Men and
Women in (the) Enterprise’
with the objective of ‘Quality
Improvement’. The aim of this
new programme is specifically
designed to appeal to up-and-
coming female managers at all
grades. ‘We have made it
perfectly clear that our aim is
to increase the number of
female managers significantly’
said Dr Heinz Klinkhammer at
the launch of the Mentoring for
Women at Deutsche Telekom
pilot project (3/11/1998).  The
objectives of this internal
program specifically for women
are to recognise, highlight and
make use of potential; to
improve communication
between hierarchies,
generations and sexes; to
increase the number of female
managers; to kick-start
motivation amongst female
employees and to increase the
pool of up-and-coming
managers.
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1 
Figures from the Bund-Länder-
Kommission für Bildungsplanung und
Forschungsförderung (BLK) for the
Max Planck Society, the Frauenhofer
Society, the Hermann von Helmholtz
Association of German Research
Centres and the Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz institutions taken together.

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