Global STEM Workforce

UNESCO UIS

According to UIS, in 2022, the percentage of women science and engineering researchers and personnel in R&D professions worldwide was 31.1%, an increase from 29.4% in 2012. However, there is a continued gender disparity in the R&D labor force. There are regions in the world with almost gender parity among R&D researchers. For instance in 2022, women in Central Asia represent 50.8% of R&D researchers, while women in Latin America and the Caribbean comprise 45.3% of the R&D workforce. However, gender imbalance is abysmal in other regions in the world, including East Asia and the Pacific and South and West Asia, where women represent 26.3% and 26.9% of the R&D personnel, respectively. All regions, except Central and Eastern Europe, experienced an increase in their share of women in R&D from 2012 to 2022.

Examining the R&D personnel of select countries by gender also reveals women’s underrepresentation in these positions. Among the selected countries, Congo and India have the lowest female representation, where less than 19% of R&D personnel  in the last 5 years were women. Only Argentina (53.6%) and Malaysia (53.5%) achieved gender parity, with over half of their researchers identifying as women.

Elsevier

Elsevier provided a field-weighted citation impact (FWCI) indicator to measure the academic impact of a publication. According to Elsevier, in 2022, the FWCI in engineering of women was lower than that of men across all selected countries, showing a continued gender disparity among research. Gender imbalance was noticeable in India, where the gender difference in FWCI scores was 0.12. Brazil, Canada, Germany, and United Kingdom had the lowest gender difference (0.02) among the selected countries. To view additional information on research impact, included data broken down by career stage and type of publication, visit the Progress Toward Gender Equality In Research And Innovation Dashboard.