NCFU, jointly with the Russian Youth Agency (Rosmolodezh) is running Women in Science – a project aimed at promoting the role women play in research activities and careers.

The whole world is facing the gender inequality issue in science, which reveals itself through major stereotypes, lower paycheck for females and other common issues. This entails some obstacles in terms of opting for a career, even though the better half of the humanity – women – prevail in higher education. Veronka Grudinina (Junior Associate, Dept for Finance & Credit, NCFU) is one of those who not only made her special choice yet also helps others.

- I believe it is common issues that stand on women’s way to success. The mentality of our and other cultures hold it that a lady is to get married first, have children, and this means that the career is pushed off in a way. All women choosing research careers often have to face misunderstanding from family members, so they have to give up the idea of completing a research paper, promote certain projects, etc., since it takes a lot of time, - Veronika shared her personal experience.

Statistically, women prevail over men in the Russian education, over 80% of university teachers being females. During that, when it comes to researchers, women account for 39% only. The global figures only enforce the conclusion – 25% of the world’s research community are women, and even the Noble Prize, which has been awarded annually since 1901, has been granted to 43 women out of 826 winners in total. The highest number of female researchers now can be seen in South-East Europe (51.2%) and Latin America (49.8%).

Speaking of the trends, notable is that the adoption of respective legislation helped increased the share of women involved in scientific research from 13% (1918) to 23% (1928), and the 60-s of the last century witnessed a rise in the number of research agencies seeking to attract more women and offering them decent pay along with acceptable working schedule. Now, the share of the Rusisan women in science has gone up to 40%.

The Women in Science project has been offered the Rusisan Government’s aid twice now, and further plans include establishing a female research society of the North-Caucasus Federal District, which is to be hosted at NCFU.