Statistics in focus: Women, science and technology: Measuring recent progress towards gender equality

Women researchers are still a minority in the Government and Higher Education Sectors — GOV and HES, a trend that is ac centuated in the natural science and engineering fields. These sectors nevertheless have higher proportions of women researchers than the Business Enterprise Sector — BES.

In the EU-15 countries, R&D expenditure is more likely to be performed in the Business Enterprise Sector and, consequently, it is less likely that this R&D will be carried out by women: in Germany, the BES accounts for 70% of total national R&D expenditure and women only represent 9.6% of all researchers in this sector.