The Glass Ceiling Index (CGI) developed by Eurostat is an indicator of real chances of women in comparison to men of achieving a high position in the academic hierarchy.
While in Poland the GCI value has been slowly, but steadily decreasing for more than a decade, and the proportion of women among academic lecturers is increasing, women still have difficulties with reaching higher levels of scientific career.
If we divide the issue of women’s presence in science in two main phases: incubation stage (studies, including the doctoral studies) and mature stage (post-graduate degrees and professorship/tenure), we can see that in the first phase women outnumber men, but in the second phase there is still a significant imbalance in terms of gender in favour of men.
We analyze data from databases belonging to OPI (Nauka Polska – Polish Science, Servicing of Financial Streams, etc.) to find out, among other things :
- What is the gender proportion among science sector employees at different career levels in various fields, in various types of institutions?
- In which regions of the country the barriers to women’s career advancement in the field of science are the largest, and where are they the smallest?
- whether the gender of the research team leader (taking into account different scientific degrees and various fields of science ) affects the chances of getting a grant?
The information collected is used for reflection on the causes of the gender gap in the science sector, and the ways to balance out the current disproportion.
An article devoted to the above issue, authored by Marek Młodożeniec and Anna Knapiński under the title “Is science still a man? Women’s participation in science”, was published in the quarterly of the Polish Academy of Sciences “Science”(Nauka), (number 2/2013).
Project title: Analysis of women’s participation and activity in the science sector
Project title: Multimedia library of publication, research reports from projects run in Poland
Website:http://www.biblio.opi.org.pl
Laboratory of Statistical Analyses and Evaluations
EU participation: subproject 4.2 of the systemic project “Support for the management of research works and their results” under Priority axis I, Action 1.1, Measure 1.1.3 of the Operational Programme Innovative Economy 2007-2013.