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There is some support for action on the pay issue both at the EU level,
from the European Trades Union Congress, and within individual Member
States, for example the Equal Opportunities Commission in Britain has
launched Valuing Women,  a high profile equal pay campaign.  Such
campaigns can be vitally important in persuading employers to ensure that
they maintain and use effective databases to monitor and address any
unwarranted gender differential on pay.
Casualisation of research careers
There is considerable variation among the Member States in how scientific
careers are organised in research institutes and universities.  In some, there
has been a considerable growth in short-term contracts.  This has been
referred to as the ‘casualisation’ of research careers.  Women are more likely
to be among those on short-term contracts.  In the UK, for example, 41%
of higher education and teaching staff are now on fixed term contracts.
Women are a minority of academic staff but are disproportionately
represented among contract workers: they comprise 43.5% of contract staff
but only 36.7% of tenured staff.  There are dangers that such scientists
become lost to the profession through their inability to get a secure position
and that their work is affected by stress associated with uncertainty about
their futures.  In other Member States, such as Sweden, tenure is the
exception rather than the norm but ‘leakage’ still occurs.  There are also
variations in the age at which a scientific career ‘takes off ’ which makes
cross-national comparison difficult.  The various patterns have different
implications for women in terms of how they integrate career breaks into
their professional lives.  Career planning can also be complicated by
structural barriers present in some countries, such as the Habilitation degree
that has until recently been considered an essential qualification for
professors in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Conclusions
In this chapter we have just drawn a rough sketch of the position of women
in science, drawing based on such scant data that could be obtained.
Further figures are provided on women and fellowship programmes and
research funding in Chapter 4.  The representation of women on
committees that shape scientific research is documented and discussed in
detail in Chapters 4 and 5.  Throughout these reviews, there is the problem
of the lack of reliable, readily accessible and harmonised data.  There is also a
clear need for in-depth studies to understand the processes that lead to the
gender imbalances we outline.
Women in science today
In Greece 38% of those on
short term contracts are
women (as opposed to 35.9%
of lecturers). Such contracts
are normally for one year.  Staff
on short-term contracts have
all duties in teaching and
research that faculty members
have but almost no rights.  They
are not allowed to have their
own lab or to supervise (at
least officially) PhD students.
They are not entitled to any of
the funds that come to the
university from the Ministry of
Education.  They are only
allowed to apply for grants and
their salaries come from the
Ministry.
At Cambridge University, with
its high level of research
activity, 64% of teaching and
research staff are on fixed
term contracts. Women make
up 40% of these but only 14%
of tenured staff.
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Science policies in the European Union
Despite these problems, there is a clear picture.  There are very few women
in top jobs in either the universities, the research institutes or in private
sector scientific enterprises.  Women are rarely awarded top prizes, and only
rarely appear among the lists of members of academies.  Women are
beginning to come into science but the leaky pipleline means that they are
lost to scientific careers.  Why should this be the case? The next chapter
looks in more detail at quality and fairness in scientific professions.
Policy points
•
Need for systematic, reliable, harmonised data on women in
science, education and technology.
•
Need for in-depth studies on processes that lead to gender
imbalances.
•
Need for more research to understand the leaky pipeline.
•
Need for more research on the lack of women in top scientific
jobs.
•
Need to abolish structural barriers to women such as the
Habilitation requirement in German-speaking countries.
•
Need for transparency of payrates for men and women faculty
members through regular, published pay audits.
•
Need to remove the gender pay gap.
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3
Quality and fairness in
scientific professions
To ensure the highest quality of scientific research and teaching, it is vital that
universities, research centres and employers recruit and promote the best
people, and provide conditions and foster cultures where they can flourish.
Recruitment and employment procedures need to be scrutinised to ensure
they meet the highest standards of good practice.  Unfortunately, some
universities and research centres still operate archaic, opaque recruitment
procedures for key positions, leaving themselves open to criticisms of
dependence upon an ‘old boy network’ to secure succession routes.  Patronage
remains an important element of academic culture in some of our institutions.
It is hard to assess its impact on the allocation of opportunities such as
fellowships, posts and committee membership in the absence of transparent
selection and recruitment procedures.  However, it is vital to ensure that
scientists of the highest quality are supported: open systems are more likely to
identify them.  The very best modern practices in hiring and firing need to be
adopted to ensure merit is the sole criterion for appointment.
This chapter examines the shift from women’s exclusion from science to
their segregation within it.  It reviews policies to foster equal opportunities:
equal treatment, positive action and mainstreaming.  It also identifies key
problems for women in scientific careers: the practice of head-hunting, the
design of fellowships for single child-free individuals and the difficulty of
returning to science after a career break. It concludes with some options for
the future to promote equality, and thereby, quality and fairness in scientific
professions.
Women in academe – from exclusion
to segregation
The history of women in science in some countries is one of exclusion to
segregation within certain disciplines and grades.  This pattern is
characteristic of women’s participation in public life more generally (Walby,
1986).  Hence, in some Member States, women were legally prohibited from
studying science until earlier this century.  In the UK, for example, the
Royal Society refused candidature to a woman in 1902 (being married, she
was not a ‘person’ in law).  No woman was put up again until 1943 when
members took a vote to change the statutes.
Carbon copies
‘In Denmark one appoints a
person who resembles oneself.
The system reproduces itself.
That is what is worrying’
‘If we leave this to the
universities nothing will happen’
(Ministry of Research and Information
Technology (1997) Women and
Excellence in Research Copenhagen:
Ministry of Research and Information
Technology)
Slow progress
‘The worrying aspect from the
point of view of equality
between men and women in the
highest research appointments
are thus the slow increase in
the proportion of women, the
significantly low proportion of
women appointed to the
research posts at the research
institutes, and the custom of
appointing professors by
invitation, which is clearly in
favour of men’
(Academy of Finland (1998) Women in
Academia: Report of the Working Group
appointed by the Academy of Finland
EDITA: Academy of Finland)
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