the results may not be as "cool/progressive/right on" as they might seem; many of the countries with high levels of female researches either have (or had until fairly recently) compulsory military conscription for males (and/or in some cases active military conflicts to levels that could make a dent in the male population and a culture that might nudge lads more towards military service or manual work than long term education..)
@vfrmedia @LittleAlex In Germany we Bad sort-of-compulsory military conscription for males as well. But conscription would give you the chance to study at the military's universities.
@vfrmedia @turion @LittleAlex ln France, conscription ended in 1997, not sure 24 years is enougth to change significatively proportions.
The figures are interesting but need a lot more investigation and clarification to assess real levels of gender equality and career opportunities - eg what are the ages of the researchers? what exactly are they researching and what are the entry qualifications?
There is already a phenomenon in many countries where more girls than boys go up to University to start with, this will also affect stats for any job that generally requires a degree level qualification >>
also researchers may be getting older in age in some more affluent countries due to hiring freezes (exacerbating existing gender gaps caused by former conscription or other social issues), and competition from well qualified people with lower salary/wage expectations in the neighbouring countries due to outsourcing, free movement and capitalism...
@LittleAlex In France we are as bad in numbers of female researchers as in the way we handled the coronavirus crisis 😬
Not that this helps any as the presented data is still extremely coarse: For Europe it counts "Head Counts", so there's no skew due to part time employed researchers (unlike potentially in Congo, India and Israel), but it doesn't state how a "researcher" is defined (or, for that matter "woman": how are queer folks counted, for example?)
Also side note, "Arab States", the well-known bastion of feminism, has an average of 41.5% women in science (that is, better than 2/3 of European countries), so it's hard to draw conclusions from these numbers alone (for this case I heard the explanation that region theology is considered the high status higher education, so that's where men gravitate to, leaving science to women)
let's do a map with % of man pregnant.
Interestingly, green is most female, not magenta-ish colors.
@LittleAlex Wow. I expected Germany and Austria far down the list, but not the Netherlands.