THE WOMEN AND SCIENCE COMMITTEE OF THE SPANISH NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL: TEN YEARS PROMOTING GENDER EQUALITY AND EXCELLENCE

The Women and Science Committee was set up in 2002 as an advisory unit on gender issues to the Presidency of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). During these ten years of existence, the committee has helped to improve the scientific careers of women in the CSIC and at the same time promoted the visibility of their scientific contributions. The history, objectives and activities of the Women and Science Committee during these years are reported here. The main gender policies and legal-framework changes at European and Spanish levels are recapped. Specifically, the sex distribution of permanent staff scientists in 2003 and 2012 are analysed and compared. The sex-disaggregated data by fields of knowledge show an improvement on the number and rank of female researchers in recent years, although they are still far from balanced. There is a bigger shortage of women in certain fields and at the top of the professional ladder. The implementation and monitoring of gender equality policies is still needed in order to approach a gender-balanced situation. This, in turn, will contribute to the excellence of the results of the CSIC's research activities.