Dr Marcela Linková, Head of the Centre for Gender and Science at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, participated in the STOA workshop on ‘Gender Equality in Research & Innovation‘ on 5 November 2025 at 15:00 CET. Her research and policy engagement have been instrumental for developing, implementing and assessing gender equality policies in research in the EU.
Dr Marcela Linková highlights the importance of integrating gender equity into the fabric of research institutions and tackling gender-based violence. Such actions are essential to maintain Europe’s competitive edge in science and innovation and ensure that research benefits everyone, not just a select few.
How would you describe the current state of gender equality in European R&I? Has there been any progress in promoting gender equality in recent years?
Marcela Linková: There have been important advances at the policy level, such as the adoption of the Gender Equality Plan (GEP) as an eligibility criterion in Horizon Europe and in multiple EU Member States. Also, policy attention to gender-based violence has increased and the 2024 Zero tolerance code of conduct provides recommendations to all stakeholders in the European Research Area. Today, we are seeing many research and higher education institutions across the EU developing policies and taking action to counteract gender-based violence.
However, it is becoming clear that we need to go beyond gender inequalities to tackle issues of racism, ableism, transphobia and discrimination of LGB+ researchers, as well as socioeconomic and global inequalities within the R&I system.
What are the implications of the underrepresentation of women in European R&I for science, society and democracy? How does this underrepresentation affect the quality and relevance of research?
Marcela Linková: We have ample and growing evidence of the detrimental effects of the under-representation of women in European R&I. Despite women earning nearly half of all PhDs in Europe, they make up only 34% of researchers. The issue is especially significant in the Business Enterprise Sector, which employs 57% of researchers in the EU. Here women make up only 22% of researchers. This is a huge waste of talent and potential, as women enter their doctoral studies committed and motivated, only to face exclusionary and discriminatory working conditions.
The underrepresentation of women in R&I also affects the type of knowledge we produce. Teams with higher proportions of women and other marginalised groups help to address historical gaps in knowledge production. While gender biases in knowledge production have historically impacted women more severely — just think how many research topics that are particularly relevant to women have been neglected for so long — men also suffer from these biases in areas like mental health and disease prevention.
We now have tools such as those described in the Gendered Innovations factsheet and the 2025 Framework for Integration and Evaluation of Inclusive Gender Analysis in Research and Innovation Content to help us address these issues more effectively.
Are there particular areas of science that would benefit more from gender-diverse research teams?
Marcela Linková: There are significant differences across disciplines and they reflect societal stereotypes about gender roles. Women are predominantly represented in fields like education, health and welfare, and agriculture, with percentages well beyond 50%, while they are notably underrepresented in fields such as information and communication technologies and engineering. In natural sciences and mathematics we have seen increases, and women today make up almost 44% doctoral graduates. This trend, alongside historical examples like women’s early dominance in software engineering, illustrates that change in gender representation across disciplines is both possible and ongoing.
Which policies would you say have been most effective in promoting gender equality in science and research institutions in Europe?
Marcela Linková: I regard Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) as very important, catalytic instruments. Making GEPs obligatory and linking institutional funding to them is having an effect. It has drawn the attention of top management to gender equality issues, especially in countries with less advanced gender equality policies in the EU. We have managed, through EU-funded projects and national measures, to build expertise and a wealth of resources, including toolkits and assessment tools.
We have also made progress in addressing gender-based violence. Projects like UniSAFE have provided research insights into its manifestations and consequences, and together with GenderSAFE have led to tools and support materials to combat it. Today, no one can plead ignorance when it comes to gender-based violence issues. We must continue implementing these tools and confront resistance to this work, which is no small feat.
What tools can we use to monitor the effects of such policies? What indicators or metrics demonstrate progress?
Marcela Linková: At the institutional level, we now have the Assessment Tool for Gender Equality Plan Capacity, which is freely available online and aligns with the GEP eligibility criterion.
In October, the Horizon Europe GenderSAFE project will launch a self-assessment tool to measure progress on institutional policies to counteract gender-based violence. These tools are designed to give management immediate insight into areas for improvement and concrete recommendations.
At the policy level, in the ERA Forum Sub-group on Inclusive Gender Equality, we are discussing monitoring at the national level. Several countries have already started to explore both formal and informal monitoring methods. We will build on this, to develop and pilot in the period of 2025 – 2027 a monitoring tool, which will include specific indicators aimed at measuring actual institutional change. Current indicators, such as the proportion of women among full professors, so called Grade A positions, or among researchers, have path dependencies that may reflect investments in R&I rather than career opportunities for women. What we know for sure is that there is a clear correlation between the EU Innovation Scoreboard and the EU Gender Equality Index, as well as the proportion of women on boards. Simply put, countries with higher innovation capacity also have a higher gender equality index and more women on boards in higher education and research.
Looking forward, what do you see as the biggest challenges to achieve gender equality in R&I, and what institutional changes do you believe are necessary to overcome these challenges in the long run?
Marcela Linková: The biggest challenge is that we don’t see things through. Often, measures are introduced and then ’simplified’ after one policy cycle, as has happened in the transition from the EU’s Framework Programme 6 (FP6) to Framework Programme 7 (FP7). We need to give our instruments and policies a chance to take proper root. Just consider the investments that went into setting up the architecture of the Gender Equality Plans, capacity building and developing monitoring tools. It would be such huge waste of institutional investments to discontinue them now.
We must keep and expand the GEP eligibility criterion across all research funders in the EU, not just within Horizon Europe. Moreover, we must take all forms of gender-based violence in the research and higher education system seriously. This includes addressing behaviours such as denigration, humiliation, yelling, microaggressions, blackmail, resource withholding and assault. We must take all manifestations as a severe encroachment on our research culture and academic freedom.
We often hear that people are our greatest resource in science, so why do we tolerate workplaces that treat them anything but?
Useful link
• STOA workshop ‘Research and Innovation for the Future: Gender Equality Driving Science, Society, and Democracy‘
• Webstream link