Editorial: Women in science: Materials 2021

According to UNESCO Institute for Statistics data (UIS—UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2020), female scientists account for a minority of the world’s researchers. Only 30% of researchers worldwide are women. Long-standing biases and gender stereotypes are discouraging girls and women away from science-related fields. In particular, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) research is traditionally male dominated and women remain under-represented. The gender gap in science is also highlighted in the European Unions’s She Figures publications, first released in 2003 and updated every 3 years since. The She Figures 2021 publication (EU—European Commission, 2021a) uses the latest available statistics to monitor the state of gender equality in research and innovation across Europe and beyond, through providing comparable data and analysis for approximately 88 indicators.