EU: Slow-down along the career path

Women are more numerous and more successful than men at first degree level in European Union universities. But once they graduate, women fall back at each step of the typical academic career.

In its 2007 report on equality between the sexes, the European Commission says women accounted for 59% of first-degree graduates last year. But once graduated, the commission says the “presence of women clearly decreases at each step of the typical academic career”.

Women’s share of PhDs decreases to 43% and is lowest at full professor level, where only 15% of grade A full professors are women.

The commission notes that study fields continue to be greatly segmented with a low proportion of women in engineering, science and technology but a high ratio in health, education and the humanities.

A separate report on promoting women in science in the 10 new EU member countries says there are now proportionately more female than male graduates under 30 in most EU countries. But women remain under-represented in science and in decision-making bodies concerned with scientific issues.

This is both a waste of human resources and a serious obstacle for the development of the sciences and for European society as a whole, the commission says.

Professor Sir Roderick Floud, dean of the school of advanced study at London University and vice-president of the European Universities Association, said there had been an enormous transformation in the gender balance in European higher education in the past 25 years – “without really anybody noticing”.

Some 25 years ago there were roughly 80 women to every 100 men in higher education. Now it is closer to 120 or 130 women to every 100 men, he added.

In an interview with University World News, Floud said there was a growing trend of women occupying more senior posts within the academic profession although this was still in its early days. Nevertheless, there was now “a revolution in European higher education which essentially overturns three millennia of discrimination against women.

“I don’t think anybody can really claim much credit for it. It’s an interesting example of social trends and the power of the market,” he said.

Floud questioned whether any actions by the European Commission in this field had been very successful. “I don’t think there’s been any political action on this at all, other than anti-discrimination legislation of a much more general application.”

He felt strongly that more women occupied university teaching posts now than in earlier years although there were no EU figures show this.

“What we’re seeing is the extension to the whole of the middle classes, including females, of the expectation of going to university,” Floud said. “When people talk of widening participation, one has an image that this extension is to less privileged social parties but in fact most of the growth of the past 30 years has been of women, mainly from the middle classes.”

In teaching, it was sometimes alleged that women were better at continuous assessment and men at formal examination. He said it was worth investigating whether women learnt in different ways from men.

“We ought to consider what the possible implications and lessons are and take that into account in design of the syllabus,” said Floud.