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This is one of the thematic reports of the study Meta-analysis of gender and science research, a project of the
7th RTD Framework Programme of the European Union (RTD-PP-L4-2007-1), commissioned by DG Research to the consortium led by CIREM (Spain) and made up of Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), Inova Consultancy Ltd. (United Kingdom), Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini (Italy), Bergische Universität Wuppertal (Germany) and Politikatörténeti Intézet KHT (Hungary). The study was carried out between 2008 and 2010.
The purpose of the study was to collect and analyse research on horizontal and vertical gender segregation in research careers, as well as the underlying causes and effects of these two processes.
The objectives of the study were to:
- Provide an exhaustive overview and analysis of research on gender and science carried out at the European, national, and regional levels.
- Make the study results accessible to researchers and policy-makers via an informed bibliography (online database) and a set of reports.
- Steer policy-making on gender and science and define future research priorities within the Framework Programme, in particular through good practice examples and gap analysis in the various research topics.
- For the purposes of the study, ‘science’ was understood in its broadest meaning, including social sciences and humanities as well as research and technological development.
The study covered the research on gender and science produced between 1980 and 2008, in all European
languages, in 33 countries: the 27 EU Member States as well as 6 Associated Countries to the Seventh
Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7) (Croatia, Iceland, Israel, Norway, Switzerland, and Turkey).
The study produced five country-group reports, seven topic reports and the final synthesis report:
This report presents
the Nordic country part of the project’s European country groups. Other country groups are the Southern,
Anglo-Saxon, Eastern and Continental countries. The aim of this report is to describe and analyse the
specific characteristics, if they exist, of the Nordic countries’ challenging and monitoring of equality issues in
science.
The first part of this report gives a state-of-the-art account of Nordic policies and practices in science. It
provides a literature review of comparative studies covering European countries and Nordic countries that
enhance our understanding of what characterizes and explains science policies and practices in the latter
country group. There is relatively little comparative research on the European or Nordic level on gender and
science issues and thus the comparative reports used here are mainly those written for European Union
funded projects. In addition, we searched databases of scientific literature to find relevant comparative
literature. The basic objective of this part is to help understand the Nordic countries as a special political
entity representing the Nordic welfare state model. Such a model is expected to create its own research
policies and institutional structures of research. One specific aim is to determine whether there have been
any developments in gender studies and women’s participation in science that are peculiar to Nordic
institutions. In addition, the central policies for the promotion of gender equality in research are studied.
Finally the general trends in gender segregation in science in the Nordic countries are assessed.
The second part is based on analyses derived from the European Gender and Science Meta-Database
(GSD). The database consists of all relevant scientific publications related to gender and science issues in
Europe. Each publication entered into the database by a national correspondent consists of several
information fields—detailed bibliographical information, English abstract, methodological approaches,
geographical coverage and relation to database topics. The report is divided into the database and metaresearch topics, namely: 1) horizontal and vertical segregation, 2) pay and funding, 3) stereotypes and
identity, 4) science as a labour activity, 5) Scientific excellence, 6) gender in research contents and 7)
gender equality policies.