---
title: "Women in science"
chunk: 14/25
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_science"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:51:28.816114+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

==== In decision-making ====
As of 2015, each step up the ladder of the scientific research system saw a drop in female participation until, at the highest echelons of scientific research and decision-making, there were very few women left. In 2015, the EU Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation Carlos Moedas called attention to this phenomenon, adding that the majority of entrepreneurs in science and engineering tended to be men. In 2013, the German government coalition agreement introduced a 30% quota for women on company boards of directors.
In 2010, women made up 14% of university chancellors and vice-chancellors at Brazilian public universities  and 17% of those in South Africa in 2011. As of 2015, in Argentina, women made up 16% of directors and vice-directors of national research centres and, in Mexico, 10% of directors of scientific research institutes at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In the US, numbers are slightly higher at 23%. In the EU, less than 16% of tertiary institutions were headed by a woman in 2010 and just 10% of universities. In 2011, at the main tertiary institution for the English-speaking Caribbean, the University of the West Indies, women represented 51% of lecturers but only 32% of senior lecturers and 26% of full professors . A 2018 review of the Royal Society of Britain by historians Aileen Fyfe and Camilla Mørk Røstvik produced similarly low numbers, with women accounting for more than 25% of members in only a handful of countries, including Cuba, Panama and South Africa. As of 2015, the figure for Indonesia was 17%.

==== Women in life sciences ====
In life sciences, women researchers have achieved parity (45–55% of researchers) in many countries. In some, the balance even now tips in their favour. Six out of ten researchers are women in both medical and agricultural sciences in Belarus and New Zealand, for instance. More than two-thirds of researchers in medical sciences are women in El Salvador, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, the Philippines, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Venezuela.
There has been a steady increase in female graduates in agricultural sciences since the turn of the century. In sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, numbers of female graduates in agricultural science have been increasing steadily, with eight countries reporting a share of women graduates of 40% or more: Lesotho, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. The reasons for this surge are unclear, although one explanation may lie in the growing emphasis on national food security and the food industry. Another possible explanation is that women are highly represented in biotechnology. For example, in South Africa, women were underrepresented in engineering (16%) in 2004 and in 'natural scientific professions' (16%) in 2006 but made up 52% of employees working in biotechnology-related companies.
Women play an increasing role in environmental sciences and conservation biology. In fact, women played a foremost role in the development of these disciplines. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson proved an important impetus to the conservation movement and the later banning of chemical pesticides. Women played an important role in conservation biology including the famous work of Dian Fossey, who published the famous Gorillas in the Mist and Jane Goodall who studied primates in East Africa. Today women make up an increasing proportion of roles in the active conservation sector. A recent survey of those working in the Wildlife Trusts in the U.K., the leading conservation organisation in England, found that there are nearly as many women as men in practical conservation roles.