Women, science, and technology.

Abstract

Tentative conclusions on the role of women in science and technology from the contributing studies are the following. First, even though they were limited to European societies and some developed non-European countries, these studies also identify gender differentiation as an undeniably universal phenomenon. The universality of gender differences was already noticed in earlier, especially comparative, studies. In our opinion, the contribution of this book is that it can encourage systematic comparisons of gender differentiation patterns, and not only comparisons of individual data or indicators, and that these comparisons may be continuously expanded to cover an increasing number of European and other countries. Second, in the light of these studies, gender inequalities prove to be impregnated with the effects of the given society, its economic, political, technoscientific and socio-cultural specificities. This is most obvious in cross-county comparisons, proving that relations between economic and technoscientific development on one hand, and gender (in)equality on the other, have no simple, regular, or even easily interpretable patterns. European social space, not to mention global space, is highly differentiated in terms of gender inequality, and certain types of European societies can also be identified and can be related to their socio-historical background (the post-socialist societies, for example). Third, despite the gender differences in research performance corroborated here, these same differences were also relativised by the findings of two very different scientific and social milieux, with far-reaching cognitive and social implications. These findings imply that simple comparisons of the number and visibility of publications should give way to more complex comparisons and studies on the efficiency and purpose of the publication strategies of men and women scientists, and also to re-examining the evaluation criteria for scientists' production. Fourth, it has been shown that, in terms of theory and methodology, the application, modification and development of theoretical models created in STS, but also in other social sciences, crucially directs empirical studies of gender differentiation in science and technology, thus enriching them with more relevant empirical insights. Fifth, although this book does not aim to offer a set of immediately applicable results for science and/or gender policy, all of its findings have a socially applicable dimension. This refers to the analysis of gender policy conceived and introduced by a powerful science funding agency whose experiences go beyond the national level, but also to all other studies from which recommendations for improving women’ s positions and roles in science and technology can be derived.

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