(Science|Business) Zaharieva announces plan to support women in science

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The European Commission will adopt a plan dedicated to supporting women in research and innovation next year, according to Ekaterina Zaharieva, the commissioner responsible for start-ups, research and innovation.

“The action plan will propose measures addressing the specific needs of women in research and innovation,” she said during a workshop organised on November 5 by STOA, the European Parliament’s science and technology advisory panel. “It will help make our universities, labs and start-ups safe from harassment and gender-based violence. It will support women who want to choose both a family and a scientific career, and will increase support to women-led start-ups and scale-ups.”

A call for evidence to inform the development of the plan will be issued by the end of 2025.

Although women account for nearly half of doctoral graduates, gender disparities persist in research and innovation careers. EU data show that women account for just 34% of the researchers across the bloc and 38% in Horizon Europe projects. Meanwhile, the EU-funded project UniSafe found in 2022 that 62% of university staff and students had experienced at least one form of gender-based violence in their institutions. 

Zaharieva also told delegates that gender equality would remain a priority in the upcoming Framework Programme, and that respecting gender equality should not be a “tick-box exercise” or “perceived as another non-financial administrative burden.”

This is despite an attempt by the Commission earlier this year to weaken gender requirements in the 2025 Horizon Europe work programmes, in the name of reducing bureaucracy. Zaharieva eventually scrapped the proposal, following pressure from the research community.

For Marcela Linková, head of the Centre for Gender and Science at the Czech Academy of Sciences, implementation is now critical. “We need to keep everything that was introduced in Horizon Europe to go forward with the next Horizon Europe,” she said during the workshop. This includes maintaining gender equality plans as a funding eligibility criterion and continuing to use gender balance to break ties between research proposals.

Linková called for “a concrete item on gender equality” in the legal text for the next Horizon Europe programme, currently missing from the Commission’s proposal. 

The same goes for the European Research Area Act, which must not only require gender equality plans but also set up an accountability mechanism, granting EU governments a strong role, if not an obligation, to monitor their implementation at the national level, she went on. “It cannot be left only to the Commission and gender equality plans in Horizon Europe.”

A source of competitiveness

Zaharieva also said that there was “a powerful economic case” to reaching gender parity in science. Citing Caroline Criado-Perez, author of Invisible Women, she pointed to some of the many inventions designed without women in mind. 

“Medical devices calibrated on men’s bodies,” she said. “Car safety tests only used male mannequins; it was only 10 years ago that the first virtual female crash test dummy reached the market,” she went on. “Neglecting women affects our competitiveness. Less diversity means poorer, sometimes even dangerous, solutions.”

For Linková, efforts should focus on the business enterprise sector, which employs 57% of researchers in the EU, of which only 22% are women. “We’re educating women in [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics], but women are not finding employment in the largest employer sector,” she said.

According to Ophelia Deroy, professor of philosophy of mind at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, more data is needed for monitoring purposes, including data on perceived as well as actual inequalities. “If there is progress, we also need to measure whether that progress is registered at the level of the researchers themselves, both women and men,” she said.

For Linková, addressing harassment and gender-based violence in universities and research institutions is particularly urgent. “Otherwise our workplaces will not be competitive. Not in terms of GDP, that too, but in terms of not being the institutions that will attract the best talent,” she said.