The European Commission published the latest edition of ‘She Figures’. Progress is limited, considering the 20 years of EU engagement in the field.
The She Figures report is published every three years and is the main source of pan‑European, comparable statistics on gender balance in science. It is produced in cooperation with the EU Member States, associated countries (incl. Switzerland), and Eurostat and funded by Horizon 2020. The She Figures 2018 highlight that the gender balance in research and innovation in Europe is improving, but that the pace is slow. Switzerland is still often below the European average (see also the press release by the Swiss Federal Statistic Office for a comparison of Switzerland with EU-28).
This year marks the 20th anniversary of EU actions to advance gender equality in research and innovation, with celebrations taking place under the Finnish presidency in the second half of 2019. It was in 1999 when the European Commission (EC) established the Helsinki Group on Gender Equality in Research and Innovation to advise the EC on policies and initiatives relevant to the topic. Since summer 2017, the Helsinki Group moved to the Council and became a Standing Working Group of the European Research Area Committee, the Standing Working Group on Gender in Research and Innovation (SWG GRI), including representatives from Switzerland. Last year, the SWG GRI analysed for example how the 2015 Council ‘Conclusions on advancing Gender Equality in the European Research Area’ are implemented in the European Research Area.
Since 2012, gender equality has been one of the priorities of the European Research Area. In Horizon Europe, gender equality will become both a ‘cross-cutting’ issue and the topic of the dedicated Work Programme ‘Science with and for Society’, which funds specific initiatives in support of the EU’s gender equality strategy.