The European sciences: How "open" are they for women? A review of the literature

Abstract

Gender inequality in sciences is an ongoing unsolved issue. Many studies have been carried out to tackle the gender specific problems in scientific communication and scientific careers. The EU-Statistics ("She Figures") document the still dominant pattern of lower female presence in higher academic ranks in almost all European Union member states. There are discrepancies between EU science policy and national social policies. The prevailing "publish or perish" attitude, atypical employment as accepted norm and the forced international mobility are factors which hamper the young and female academics' scientific careers. How open for women are the so called "open initiatives"? Women are sceptical towards FLOSS (free/libre open source software), they feel intimidated by the male dominated "chilly" working climate. Only 13 percent of the international Wikipedia writers are female. Only articles on traditionally male topics as soccer are considered as relevant in the German Wikipedia and are allowed to "survive". There is almost no open access publishing in German gender studies. Generally the surveys of attitudes and practices of scholars on open access publishing ignore the gender variable. The only exception is a larger survey of the DFG. In this study women more often than men wish more training in open access publishing techniques.