Luxembourg worst in EU on percentage of female scientists

Luxembourg has the lowest percentage of female scientists and engineers in the whole of the European Union (EU), Eurostat has said.

According to findings published by the EU statistics office, only one-quarter of people working as scientists or engineers in Luxembourg are women.

This is lower than the 40% EU average and positions the Grand Duchy at the bottom of the list of distribution by gender across all member states.

The highest percentage of women working in science and engineering is in Lithuania, with 58%, followed by Bulgaria at 54% and Latvia with 52%.

Finland scored 3 percent higher than Luxembourg, and Hungary came in at 31%.

In 2016, almost 73 million people aged between 25 and 64 were employed in science and technology across the EU – 51% professionals and 49% technicians.

In Luxembourg, 66.5% of its science and technology workers were professionals.

While 23.5 million women with university-level education were working in service activities across the EU in 2016, only 1.3 million worked in manufacturing activities.

And, with the exception of Luxembourg, Switzerland and Turkey, women hold the majority of jobs in science and technology in service activities.

In most member states, there are at least as many women as men in university education, and the number of femal doctorate students has increased more rapidly than the number of equivalent male students, according to Eurostat.