Global Gender Gap Index 2014: 57th

Since the last EWM General Meeting in Bonn I made some efforts to advertise the idea of EWM in my country. In February 2014 I was invited to the conference “Archipelago of Mathematics” in Warsaw University of Technology (I presented the report in the EWM Newsletter no.24). I talked about the contemporary women mathematicians and introduced European Women in Mathematics. The presentation included the basic facts about EWM, structure and activities, as well as some statistics on the situation of women mathematicians across Europe.

In September 2014 I participated in the Polish Conference of Applied Mathematics organized by Polish Academy of Science. It is one of the largest conferences in Poland. I made a presentation about EWM to invite new members and raised an interesting discussion about the work conditions and gender issues in Poland.

The participants made the points about the main differences between Polish and West European systems to organize the work at universities in general, not only in mathematics or science. Mainly, we do not rely on post-docs, hence we are not forced to compete for a job every 2-3 year. The research position is mostly connected to teaching obligations (with proportion 50-50 but it is often biased towards teachings which does not leave much time for the research). Additionally, the social security system in Poland does not provide any help for the families and working women in rising children. Together with the limited access to the kindergartens (too few) or afternoon care in schools, it forces women to focus mainly on family and child care than work, not to mention leaving for conferences. That is why we have still too few women professors while so many women study mathematics and science and complete PhDs. The scientific career often stops at the position of Assistant or Lecturer. As my friend summarized the situation: “with three kids at home forget about research”. I only stress here that the above described situation concerns not only mathematics but all the disciplines and universities in Poland and to solve the problem we need deep changes in social security system from the government level.

There is the Polish Mathematical Society (PTM) – the largest mathematical organisation in Poland with long tradition (since 1919). Among many activities like the 6th European Congress of Mathematics in Cracow 2012 or support for the young mathematicians, the association supports the developpment of mathematical education and popularization of mathematics. Aside of this longlasting and successful work there are also the government supported Campaigns to encourage girls to become engineers or to study science “Dziewczyny na Politechniki!” and “Dziewczyny do Scisłych!” (the names mean “Girls as Engineers!” and “Girls go Science!”) with the wide support of mass-media. Many women mathematicians are already engaged in the above mentionned activities, hence EWM has no much space left to attract new members.