National Assessments on Gender Equality in the Knowledge Society — Project Summary/Key Findings

National Assessments on Gender Equality in the Knowledge Society
Gender in science, technology and innovation

Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World, 2012

204 Ventress Road, Brighton, Ontario, Canada K0K 1H0 www.wigsat.org / shuyer@wigsat.org

GEKS Team
Coordinators:
Sophia Huyer, Executive Director, WISAT
Nancy Hafkin, Senior Associate, WISAT
Data support: Dela Kusi-Appouh

National Researchers:
1. Brazil
Alice Rangel de Paiva Abreu, Professora Emérita, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Maria Coleta F A de Oliveira, Demography Department, Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences,
Campinas State University (UNICAMP)

2. India
Sudha Nair, Gender Advisory Board, United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development
(UNCSTD), India

3. Indonesia
Wati Hermawati, Researcher, PAPPIPTEK-LIPI, Indonesian Institute of Sciences
Rina Sufiani Saari, Head of Library Services Section, Centre for Scientific Documentation and Information - Indone-
sian Institute of Sciences

3. Republic of Korea
Young Ock Kim, Director, Labour-Statistics, Research Department, Korean Women’s Development Institute
You-Kyung Moon, Research Fellow, Labor and Statistics Research Department, KWDI

4. South Africa
Nelius Boshoff, Senior Researcher, Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST)/ South Af-
rica Academy of Sciences (ASSAf)

5. USA
Rachel Ivie, American Institute of Physics
Arnell Ephraim, American Institute of Physics

6. European Union
Elias Sanz Casado, Professor, Department of Library Sciences and Director of the Laboratory of Metric Studies of
Information (LEMI), Universidad Carlos III Madrid, Spain
Daniela de Filippo, Researcher, Department of Library Sciences Universidad de Carlos III Madrid, Spain

About the National Assessments on Gender and STI:
This project is a joint initiative of Women in Global Science and Technology (WISAT) and the Organization for
Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD). It is supported by the futureInnovate.net software platform
and the Elsevier Foundation.

More information on the project, including national reports and the Results Scorecard, are available at:
www.wigsat.org/node/49.

Contact:
Sophia Huyer, Executive Director, WISAT
shuyer@wigsat.org, www.wigsat.org

Gender Equality in the Knowledge Society
Women's contributions to sustainable socio-economic development as food producers and providers, own-
ers of micro and small-scale enterprises, healthcare providers, household managers, educators and natural
resource managers1, are critical to the achievement of poverty reduction and the MDGs. However, they are
poorly represented at all levels of decision making, earn less income than men with lower levels of employ-
ment – frequently in the nonformal sector, experience the effects of poverty more severely than men, and are
expected to manage their activities with fewer resources.

The global community has recognized this lack of support for women's contributions. FAO notes that if fe-
male farmers had the same access to productive resources as male farmers (fertilizers, extension services,
agricultural information, finance and land), their agricultural yields could increase by 20 to 30 percent, in
turn increasing national agricultural production by 2.5 to 4 percent and reducing the number of malnour-
ished people by 12 to 17 percent2. If women’s paid employment rates were raised to the same level as
men’s, it is estimated the GDPs of the United States, Japan, UAE and Egypt would increase by 5, 9, 12 and 34
percentage points respectively3.

A gender imbalance also exists in STI education, where males outnumber females worldwide due to a range
of barriers for females such as their need for safety and security, teaching methods that favour boys, precon-
ceptions that S&T is a male domain, and unwillingness of families to support their daughters at higher lev-
els of education. Males also outnumber females in technical and vocational education worldwide. At higher
levels of education the number of women in STI falls continuously from secondary school to university,
laboratories, teaching and decision making. There are consistently low levels of women in the skilled tech-
nology workforce in the private sector, with even fewer females in senior management and as leaders of
large companies4.

In the increasingly important area of access to communication, women have lower levels of access to ICTs
such as internet and smartphones in the majority of countries in the world. The Cherie Blair Foundation has
identified a large gender gap in use of mobile phones: globally a woman is 21% less likely to own a mobile
than a man, a figure which increases to 23% in Africa, 24% in the Arab world, and 37% in South Asia – leav-
ing a total of 300 million women5 without such access.

A strong national base of science and technology capacity is at the core of long-term economic growth, in-
novation and research. It is a prerequisite for improving the lives of the poor through better nutrition and
health, higher crop yields, cleaner water, providing clean and renewable energy sources and improved soil
and natural resources management. It will also be needed to face challenges such as climate change and
economic shocks. Building national capacity for adoption, adaptation, innovation and technological diffu-
sion of basic and medium technologies is important for job creation and poverty reduction, while increasing
productivity, establishing infrastructure services, providing access to new markets, and improving man-
agement of natural resources. 6

STI is also needed to support women's livelihood, domestic and natural resource management activities.
"Women's roles roles as food producers, educators of their children, family caregivers and community man-
agers will need to be underpinned by STI resources in order for countries to meet many of the MDG targets
(UNCTAD, 2011:3)."

Gendered barriers to STI and technology access and use create a large gender in the knowledge society that will not
improve automatically with economic growth.

These gaps in women's access to resources, opportunities, S&T education and employment, and technolo-
gies are depriving countries of women’s experience, creativity and ability. They are a waste of the resources
invested in the education and support of women and girls and in the national technology and extension
systems that do not reach a substantial portion of the population. Developing a scientific and technological
workforce as well as supporting a population to understand and use S&T to improve their lives and liveli-
hoods will help to bridge these gaps. Countries will need to mobilize the active participation of women and
other underrepresented groups in the science, engineering and technology (SET) and information technol-
ogy (IT) workforces, and improve the ability of these groups to develop and use technologies in areas such
as food production, water and sanitation, and energy.

The Gender Equality – Knowledge Society (GE&KS) indicator framework was developed to address the fact
that women — particularly those in the developing world — find themselves on the wrong side of both the
digital divide and the knowledge divide. Worldwide, their capacity to participate in science, technology and
innovation is grossly under-developed and under-utilized. They are at risk of becoming increasingly mar-
ginalized in national knowledge societies and science, technology and innovation systems: not only do they
have less access to information and technology, they are poorly represented in educational, entrepreneur-
ship and employment opportunities. From a rights perspective, in order to promote sustainable economic
growth, and to achievement poverty reduction and development goals, it is important to ensure that women
have the access and the opportunity to design, create and take advantage of the opportunities of the knowl-
edge society.

OWSD, 2012 OWSD, 2012 MSSF, 2006

The Framework on Gender Equality and the Knowledge Society
The Framework on Gender Equality and the Knowledge Society (GE&KS) brings together gender-sensitive
data on key areas in the knowledge society (ICT, science, technology and innovation) with gender indicators
of health, economic and social status and other areas.

Gender equality and empowerment are integrated into this framework because they constitute the base
conditions for women's successful participation in the knowledge society. Comparative analysis of the
GE&KS indicators will help to arrive at identification of sex-specific trends which can lead to better research,
practice, assessment and evidence-based recommendations that will shed light on the closing of knowledge
divides.

The picture of women’s participation in the knowledge society will be incomplete without some under-
standing of the context of women’s lives in a given country. What are women’s economic activities, partici-
pation in economic and political decision-making, knowledge and skills, their health, well-being, status and
the conditions under which they live? No matter what the level of development or GDP of their countries,
these factors all condition women’s ability to participate in the knowledge society, often in ways that are
quite different from men. For example, women’s agency is central to gender empowerment in the knowl-
edge society: women will achieve equality if they are actors in the process of change in their own lives and

2 WISAT-OWSD

communities. Women will be in a position to effectively contribute and benefit from the knowledge society
if they have the full range of gender equality rights, benefits and opportunities.

Access to education, participation in S&T and ability to earn income are not automatically connected. Nu-
merous studies hve shown that getting more girls into science and technology education at secondary and
tertiary levels does not automatically lead to increased numbers of females at higher levels of S&T insituti-
tuons, or in the S&T/knowledge society workforce7. Similarly, getting more women into the paid workforce
does not ensure that they will become senior managers, leaders or decision makers in either the public or
private sectors.

In constructing this framework, a small number of simple indicators was identified that would be relevant
to key policy issues, comparable and affordable to collect. The importance of developing a framework that
could be used and adapted by national statistical offices across a wide variety of countries was taken into
account. Framework indicators were drawn from the major international gender equity indexes and data-
bases along with the major STI, ICT and knowledge indexes8.

The GE&KS framework is organized into three sections – Inputs, Outcomes and Enabling Policies, each
comprised of key data indicators9:

Inputs Supporting Outcomes
Policy

Health - Healthy life expec- Knowledge society Knowledge - Business and
Status tancy policy environment Society corporate decision
- Prevalence of disease Decision making
- Fertility Gender policy Making - Science decision
Social Status - Sex ratio at birth making
Gender budgets
- Violence against Knowledge - Administrative and
women Science and engineer- Economy managerial posi-
- Time use ing policy tions
Economic - Economically active - Information tech-
Status population Science an nology workers
- Income Science, tech- - Science and engi-
- Categories of work nology and neering education
- Poverty innovation - Scientists and engi-
Access to - Property rights participation neers
Resources - Access to capital - Publications
- Access to ICT - Brain drain
- Quality of infrastructure - Entrepreneurship
- Electricity consumption

Agency - Parliamentary represen-
tation
- Women in government
- Contraceptive use

Opportunity - Literacy
and Capabi- - Access to education
ity - Access to training

2 WISAT-OWSD

Phase One
A pilot assessment of six countries and one region took place during 2012: Brazil, India, Indonesia, the Re-
public of Korea, South Africa, the United States, and the European Union. The study will be expanded to
other countries in 2013.

National researchers have analysed data available from national and international sources. National reports
provide a situational analysis inorporating both quantitative and qualitative data and can be viewed as
stand-alone reports. Data from the national studies was incorporated into the global online analysis plat-
form which produced the cross-national comparisons and rankings.

Key Findings
The major finding of this study is that the knowledge gender divide continues to exist in all countries, even
those which have a highly-developed knowledge society: Women participate at much lower levels in
knowledge society decision making and the knowledge economy than men. In the science and technology
sector, only in the health and life sciences (education) are they represented equally with men, and only in
some countries. In all countries, female representation in the science and technology workforce is lower than
male. In all countries in this review – which represent the leading knowledge-based economies in the world – the
knowledge society is failing to include women to an equal extent, and in some cases, their inclusion is negligible.

• Numbers of women in the science, technology and innovation fields are alarmingly low in the
world’s leading economies, and are actually on the decline in many, including the United States.

• Women remain severely under-represented in the areas of engineering, physics and computer sci-
ence — less than 30% in most countries. In addition, the numbers of women actually working in
these fields are declining across the board. Even in countries where the numbers of women study-
ing science and technology have increased, it has not translated into more women in the work-
place.

• Women have lower levels of access to the productive resources necessary to support active en-
gagement in the knowledge society and related professions – property (land); financing; technol-
ogy; and education.

• In turn their representation in employment, entrepreneurship and research is lower in key sectors
of the knowledge society.

• Female parity in the science, technology and innovation fields is tied to multiple empowerment
factors, with the most influential being higher economic status, larger roles in government and
politics, access to economic, productive and technological resources, and a supportive policy envi-
ronment. Findings also show that women have greater parity in countries with government poli-
cies that support health and childcare, equal pay, and gender mainstreaming.

• The results show that access to education is not a solution in and of itself and neither is either
health or economic status. Each element is only one part of what should be a multi-dimensional
policymaking approach. There is no simple solution.

• Women in most of the most countries under study are experiencing inequality of opportunity.

• Most countries do not collect sex-disaggregated data consistently at the national and international
levels. More data is necessary to inform the policies and programes that will allow countries to
profit from the underutilized potential of their female population.
3 WISAT-OWSD

o Indonesia and India collect and make available the least sex-disaggregated data in all sec-
tors, including but not restricted to STI.

o Little or no consistent sex-disaggregated data is collected in many countries in important
areas, such as business leadership, heads of universities and research institutes, skilled
emigrants, publication of refereed articles, rates of HIV/AIDS infection among female
youth, and others.

• While women’s enrollment in bio and health-related sciences is high in general, female representa-
tion drops dramatically in physics and engineering, and in the transition to the S&E workforce. All
of these should be clear signals to policy makers for the need to address these consistent gaps in
participation.

• Women’s low level of representation in decision-making and in formal enterprises in the private
sector is a shocking gap, and in view of the share of women in informal enterprises worldwide, is a
glaring inconsistency that needs to be addressed. This is particularly important when one factors in
the contribution that women make to poverty eradication and food security at the local level and in
informal enterprises.

• Brazil and South Korea may represent models for encouraging and retaining women in the science,
engineering and technology workforce, but particularly in South Korea women’s participation in
other sectors of society, including decision-making and the private sector, are of great concern. This
indicates that economic and STI development that does not take women into account will in fact
leave them behind.

• We also see that women in countries with low levels of health and/or social status are behind from
the very beginning, leaving those countries with additional constraints to women’s knowledge so-
ciety participation that are very difficult to overcome. These can prevail despite an enabling policy
environment. India and South Africa are cases in point.

4 WISAT-OWSD

Overall findings

The European Union as a composite ranks first overall, and first or second in every other dimension except
opportunity and capability. This is a remarkable result, considering the wide variation among countries in
the EU in terms of social support, GDP, and promotion of science, technology and innovation (STI).

The United States ranks second overall, but fifth in health, agency, social status. Its high status overall comes
from its primary ranking in the opportunity and capability and the knowledge society decision-making di-
mensions – educational levels of women and positions in private sector and science decision-making levels.
It comes in second in economic status and access to resources. The US ranks lowest in enabling policies.
While it ranks higher in other sectors, this finding indicates that a more favourable policy environment for
the US could be an important strategy towards addressing economic competitors in other parts of the world
and a strategy for regenerating economic growth after the economic crisis of 2010.

Brazil ranks the highest of the remaining countries, coming in above even the Republic of Korea. It is third
overall, first in women's participation in the knowledge economy and science, technology and innovation,
as well as agency. It is second in health, opportunity and capabiity and enabling policy, and third in social
status, economic status and access to resources. However its low ranking (4th) in knowledge society deci-
sion-making show where improvement needs to be made in addition to those areas where it ranks third.
Brazil is an example of a country with both a highly enabling policy environment for women and effective
implementation strategies.

Although Indonesia comes out fourth overall, its actual status is not clear as a result of a paucity of available
statistics on the situation of women. Of the countries in this study, Indonesia collects the least sex-
disaggregated data, with data unavailable for many of the indicators. Its positive enabling policy environ-
ment, though, gives it a strong potential for a positive outcome for women that would be clearer if support-
ing data were available. The available data gives it a fourth ranking in most sectors, which reflect a steady
improvement over the last decade10, however current levels of economic status, access to resources, agency,
health and social status indicate a need to improve the actual status of women in the country.

South Africa ranks fifth overall but first in agency. It ranks highly also in knowledge society decision-
making (2), third in social status, and fourth (although close to the higher ranked countries) in science, tech-
nology and innovation participation. This is likely a result of a strong educational system, a policy focus on
5 WISAT-OWSD

STI, as well as a quota system implemented in various sectors of society to promote diversity of participa-
tion by race and gender. Its high rate of HIV in the population puts it last in health, while it ranks fifth in
access to resources.

Republic of Korea – While it ranks first in health it is last several sectors, including economic status, access to
resources, enabling policy, knowledge economy and STI participation. It ranks second to last (sixth) overall.
This reflects the situation that even though it ranks third in opportunity and capability it sees a low level of
female participation in public and economic life in both public and private sectors. This shows the country
has failed to adequately support its women to participate actively in its economic success. It also shows the
lack of correlation between a country’s GDP and gender equality.

India ranks the lowest overall and in most categories, except in economic status; knowledge economy, ena-
bling policy; and health. While its enabling policy environment is very positive and has been in place for
many years, implementation and funding needs to increase substantially before its women can equally
benefit from its innovation advantage. There are definite signs of progress, though. It has achieved universal
primary education enrollment for example. However, size of the population mitigates against a rate of
change as rapid as a country such as Indonesia or Brazil.

1
UNCTAD, 2011. Applying a Gender Lens to Science, Technology and Innovation. Current Studies on Science, Technology
and Innovation, No. 5 ed. Geneva: United Nations.
2
Food and Agriculture Organization, 2011. The State of Food and Agriculture 2010-2011: Women in Agriculture, Clos-
ing the gender gap for development. Rome: FAO.
3
Aguirre, D., L. Hoteit, C. Rupp, K. Sabbagh, 2012. Empowering the Third Billion: Women and the World of Work in
2012. [Briefing, Booz&Co.]. Available from: www.booz.com/global/home/press/display/51226251.
44
UNCTAD, 2011; UNESCO, 2007. Science, Technology, and Gender: An International Report. Paris: UNESCO; UNESCO
Institute for Statistics (UIS), 2011. Global Education Digest 2011. Montreal, Canada: UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
5
GSMA Development Fund and Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, 2010. Women and Mobile: A Global Opportunity.
Available from:
http://www.cherieblairfoundation.org/uploads/pdf/women_and_mobile_a_global_opportunity.pdf.
6
Juma, Calestous and Lee Yee-Cheong, 2006. Innovation: Applying knowledge for development. UN Millennium Project
Task Force on Science, Technology and Innovation ed. London: Earthscan; UNDP, 2005. Botswana Human Devel-
opment Report: Harnessing Science and Technology for Human Development. Gabarone: UNDP.
7
See UNESCO 2011, and American Assocation of University Women (AAUW), 2010. Why so Few? Women in Sci-
ence, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. February. Washington: AAUW.
8
See Huyer, S. and Hafkin, N. 2007. Engendering the Knowledge Society: Measuring Women's Participation. Ottawa:
National Research Centre and Orbicom.
9
For the reasons behind the choice of indicators, see Huyer, Sophia, Nancy Hafkin, Heidi Ertl,and Heather Dry-
burgh, 2005. Women in the Information Society. In Sciadis, G., ed. From the digital divide to digital opportunities: Measur-
ing infostates for development. Montreal: Orbicom.
10
Lack of data for many indicators means that Indonesia's ranking may change as more data and expert analysis are
incorporated into the study.

6 WISAT-OWSD

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