Why should the OECD governments be concerned with women in scientific careers? According to OECD Deputy Secretary-General Berglind Ásgeirsdóttir, who opened the workshop, the available data show that the number of female students enrolled in science courses is much higher than the number of women actually employed in research occupations. There is thus a risk that much of the social and individual investment in human capital is lost if a large part of that investment does not find itself participating in economic activities. Another reason for concern about women in science has to do with achieving equality between men and women in all walks of life, a societal goal with a long historical process in OECD countries. Arguably, women bring in different perspectives and research interests and as such can contribute to improving the quality of research. Furthermore, scientific integrity itself depends on non-discrimination.

During the last three decades much has been done to improve the production and dissemination of statistics that reflect the actual situation of women and men in society. Gender statistics describe social progress from the perspective of gender equality. In order to accomplish this, all statistics on individuals must be available by sex and reflect society’s gender equality issues. Today most national statistical offices have a policy that all data on individuals should be disaggregated by sex. Gender statistics is a relatively new field that cuts across all traditional statistical fields.

The number of female researchers in doctoral programmes has increased. However, men still outnumber women in professorships and the number of female deans and university rectors is low. There appears to be a glass ceiling separating women from higher academic decision-making positions in academic fields, as in other areas.

The focus of women in science constitutes an important component of the US National Science Foundation’s (NSF) strategic investment portfolio. The mission of the NSF is to promote progress across all fields of basic science and engineering through its investment portfolio in research and education. A high priority within that portfolio is broadening participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (hereafter, S&E). Some of the many NSF programs supported to broaden participation in S&E focus on women. The reasons for such investments include the benefits derived from the intellectual diversity in perspective brought to bear on the scientific enterprise and the progressive decline in women’s participation at advanced levels of S&E, especially relative to their representation in the general US population as well as their greater representation at earlier levels of the educational and career pathway. A few data reveal this latter point.

I thank you for the invitation to participate in the concluding panel of this workshop, which I found very interesting and very encouraging for future OECD action in this field. Being the only person from academia on this panel, I would like to take the opportunity to highlight for the audience of policy makers (representatives of OECD member states) some aspects of the problem of women’s under-representation in research and science. I examine them in the light of findings from women’s and gender studies in the scientific and technological fields. I believe that policy making can greatly benefit from knowledge produced in universities that enables it to improve its efficiency.