This approach aims to promote, as far as possible, the gendering of statistical collections at national and European level, in order to obtain harmonised and comparable data. This has been implemented mainly through existing data collection activities at European level. It hinges upon a strong level of co-operation and willingness between all institutions involved in the production of statistics at European and international levels. This co-operation results from the recognition that women make an important contribution to science
These institutions are:
All these organisations have addressed gender issues in many and various ways as indicated below:
The Parliamentary Assembly
of the Council of Europe adopted in February 1999 a report
(Doc. 8332) from its Committee on Science and Technology
on the Role of women in the field of science and technology.
Summary Throughout Europe, increasing numbers of women are
gaining and using academic qualifications and working in
occupations that, for a long time, were a male preserve.
However, while this demonstrates that the gender-orientation
of research and occupations can change, the positions occupied
by women within them still tend to be more junior than those
of men. What is more, male hegemony persists, at all levels,
especially in mathematics and physics, and in pure research
and in the field of industrial applications. The fact that
women are kept away from knowledge and occupations which
play a key role in modern society, such as those related
to science and technology, is unfair and harmful both for
women and for society as a whole which deprives itself of
their skills. The Committee on Science and Technology proposes
three main sets of recommendations to rectify this situation.
Firstly, to improve the availability of information on the
place that women occupy in science and technology; secondly,
to improve girls' access to scientific and technological
studies and careers and thirdly, to achieve greater equality
in the relations between men and women throughout society.
(More information at http://www.coe.int/)
UNESCO is actively
involved in promoting women’s access to science
and technology and organizes and supports many activities.
There are the “L'OREAL/UNESCO prizes and grants
for Women in Science”, the UNESCO Regional Chairs
"Women, Science and Technology" to promote
women scientists and scientific training for girls”
and various regional, national and international networks
of women scientists that UNESCO has created. Towards
the end of 2005 the publication of a world report
on science technology and gender is foreseen. For
more information on these activities visit http://www.unesco.org/science/).
Eurostat, which is
the Statistical Office of the European Communities,
provides the European Union with statistics at European
level that enable comparisons between countries and
regions. Over the last four years Eurostat has mobilised
a major effort to integrate sex-breakdown into R&D
statistics, most notably in the legal basis and in
the questionnaires since 2001. The Women and Science
unit work closely and collaborate regularly with Eurostat
colleagues from unit B5 (Reseach) in their efforts
to improve data quality and also to source other areas
of data to exploit which are already available through
the Eurostat statistical system (e.g. structure of
earnings survey, labour force survey etc….).
Since October 2004, Eurostat has been disseminating
all data for free through their website, for more
information, please click
OECD has produced the two
reference manuals in the field of defining the standards
to be used for R&D statistical data collection,
i.e. the Frascati and Canberra Manuals.
The Frascati Manual (FM), adopted in 1963 (and revised
in 2002), is devoted to the measurement of human and
financial resources devoted to R&D and identifies
three categories of R&D personnel: researchers,
technicians and supporting staff.
The Canberra Manual (developed through a co-operation
between Eurostat/DG Research and OECD) was first adopted
in 1995. It covers the human resources actually or
potentially devoted to the systematic generation,
advancement, diffusion of the scientific and technological
knowledge, employed in S&T activities at the appropriate
level or having received a specific qualification.
For more information see http://www.oecd.org