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Yes, but slowly—and the clearest global measure is women’s share of the research workforce, not every aspect of equality in science. Women made up 31.4% of researchers worldwide in 2023, up from 29.5% in 2013, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). That is progress, but researchers remain far from gender parity.
What does the global figure measure?
The 31.4% figure is women’s share of researchers worldwide in 2023. It does not represent everyone employed in science, nor does it measure pay, promotion, leadership, retention, safety, or access to research resources. UIS is the custodian agency for the research-and-development indicators used to track progress toward UN Sustainable Development Goal 9.5. Its researcher-density measure—full-time-equivalent researchers per million inhabitants—is different from the women’s share reported here. UIS’s 2026 R&D data release explains the latest figures.
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The data are internationally coordinated, but depend on national reporting and updates. The 2026 release incorporated new or updated data for 43 countries, drawing on the UIS 2025 R&D Statistics Survey and partner contributions. The result is a useful global indicator, not a perfectly complete census of every country and research workplace.
How much has women’s representation changed?
UIS reports that women accounted for 31.4% of researchers in 2023, compared with 29.5% in 2013. A previous UIS release reported 31.1% in 2022, compared with 29.4% in 2012. These are separate comparisons from releases with different reference windows and updated data; they should not be combined into a single fixed annual series. Both show a gradual rise, not a rapid move to parity. UIS described the 2026 result as “slow progress toward gender parity.”
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Why does the global average hide important differences?
Women’s share of the research workforce varies by region. In the 2026 release, women represented around 45% of researchers in Central Asia, Northern Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean. The previous UIS release gave a 2022 range from 23.5% in Eastern Asia to 46.5% in Central Asia. These regional figures use different release windows, so they illustrate variation rather than a direct year-to-year comparison.
Representation also differs by field and employment sector. UNESCO reported that, in 2018, women made up 28% of engineering graduates and 40% of computer science graduates. Those are graduate figures from a specific year—not the share of all researchers working in those fields. UNESCO’s 2025 factsheet says women are approaching equitable representation in academic and public-sector research, while men continue to dominate private-sector research in most countries. Its business-sector summary is based on 95 countries with data. UNESCO’s overview of the gender gap in science discusses field and workplace barriers.
Why don’t education figures translate directly into research jobs?
Women’s participation in higher education does not automatically produce equal representation at every later career stage. UNESCO’s 2025 factsheet reports that women accounted for 52% of bachelor’s students, 55% of master’s students, and 47% of doctoral students globally. The same factsheet reports that women made up 35% of science graduates. These statistics cover different populations and measures; they should not be treated as a single cohort moving through a pipeline or as proof of one specific cause.
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UNESCO’s 2025 factsheet draws its headline researcher data from 2023 or the most recent available year, while its graduate data cover 2018–2023. Those dates and populations matter when comparing education with employment: a graduate share from a multi-year window is not directly interchangeable with the workforce share for a particular year.
What contributes to the remaining gap?
There is no single established explanation. UNESCO’s 2024 explainer identifies a combination of social, cultural, and gender norms; underrepresentation in leadership; unsupportive learning environments; and inadequate work environments and cultures. This is a synthesis of contributing barriers, not a quantified breakdown that shows how much each factor accounts for. As UNESCO Programme Specialist Ana Persic put it, “there is no single reason for the gender gap in science.”
Workforce headcounts alone cannot show how recruitment, career progression, leadership opportunities, funding, or retention differ by gender. Nor do the cited global figures establish the conditions researchers experience in every country or institution. UIS argues for comparable gender-disaggregated statistics alongside institutional and administrative evidence on these career dimensions. Its article “Measuring gender equality in science: Why better data matter” explains what broader measurement can add.
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What does UNESCO recommend?
UNESCO’s Call to Action treats the response as a shared responsibility for governments, research and educational institutions, funders, private actors, and civil society. Its proposed approaches include:
- Promoting role models who challenge stereotypes about who can be a scientist.
- Using educational strategies to support girls’ participation in science.
- Adopting workplace policies that advance inclusion, diversity, and equity.
- Improving regular, high-quality, internationally comparable gender-disaggregated data, and supplementing it with evidence on recruitment, progression, leadership, funding, and retention.
UNESCO presents these as parts of a systemic response, rather than a single intervention guaranteed to close the gap. Its Call to Action sets out the collective approach.
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