International Women's Day in Science recognises the critical role women and girls play in science and technology, engineering and mathematics but it also underlines the need to raise awareness of the underrepresentation of women and girls in science.
According to UNESCO data for the period from 2014 to 2016, only 30% of all female students choose STEM studies in higher education and worldwide enrolment quotas for female students are lower than for their male colleagues in all sciences.
IRB above Croatian, European average for share of women employees
According to Eurostat, there are 6.3 million female scientists and engineers throughout the European Union, which is a share of 41% in the total number of persons employed in those sectors.
Data provided by the Ministry of Science and Education indicate that women account for 46% of active scientists in Croatia. Data by the State Bureau of Statistics for 2019 show that 680 people were awarded PhDs and 55.4% of them were women.
A total of 427 holders of PhD degrees are employed at the Ruđer Bošković Institute and 246 or 60% are women. Apart from that, the institute currently has 220 junior researchers working on their doctoral theses and 141 of them are women or as many as 64%.
That fact means that IRB ranks above the Croatian and EU average.