On the occasion of today's Women's Day, we wish all our female scientists, employees and students joy in achieving their goals and perseverance in achieving them. We also wish that your everyday activities will give you freedom and satisfaction and that they will often make you cross impossible boundaries.
We asked prof. dr hab. Ewa Łojkowska from the Intercollegiate Faculty of Biotechnology UG and GUMed whether Women's Day is worth celebrating: - 'I think that Women's Day is worth celebrating. First of all, because it is necessary to show that the position of women in science is still weak - female professors constitute only around ¼ of researchers with the title of professor. It is also a very good time to talk about the successes of women scientists and to show female researchers who have achieved scientific success so that they set an example for students and researchers at the threshold of their scientific careers.'
On this occasion, we would like to remind you of the Report entitled 'Women in Science - managing diversity and gender equality in the social responsibility of the University of Gdańsk', which is the result of extensive activities in the area of the University's social responsibility.
The report 'Women in Science' is the first Polish diagnosis of differences in the view of female and male researchers in Poland in terms of place of employment. It has the ambition to set a new trend in looking at talent management and science in Poland, drawing attention to the potential lying in the diversity of gender, age, origin and, very importantly, scientific diversity. The coexistence and cooperation of women and men, representatives of different scientific disciplines is an opportunity for Polish science. A summary of university resources in the form of such reports helps to plan university development strategies for the coming years.
Below we present trends concerning the situation of women researchers at the University of Gdańsk, from the 'Women in Science' Report published by the Commission for the Implementation of the Social Responsibility of Science Policy (KomSON).
- In the case of assistant and assistant professor positions, women and men represent an equal percentage of researchers.
- In the last 10 years, we have seen a positive phenomenon of increasing the proportion of women among researchers employed as university professors - the proportion of women among staff employed in this position has increased by around 50%. Women made up 30% and 43% of university professors in 2008 and 2019 respectively.
- Women account for only about 25% of researchers with a professorship - in this case, little has changed in the last 10 years. 22% and 26% of researchers with the title of professor were women in 2008 and 2019, respectively.
- The above observations apply to the situation of the University as a whole as well as to individual departments and fields of science.
- Female and male researchers achieve similar results when applying for funding for international and national scientific projects, except that women are managers of more projects and men are more likely to be managers of larger and better-funded projects.
- The analysis of the salaries of men and women at UG has shown that the salaries of men and women at the positions of university assistants, assistant professors and professors are at a similar level. Differences can be observed in the case of female researchers and researchers with the title of a professor - in this case, the salaries of female professors are on average about 7% lower.
- It is necessary to systematically and transparently monitor and examine the effectiveness of the implementation of legal regulations on equal treatment of women and men at all levels of the scientific career.