Introduction

The "Women in Copernicus" project shed some light into the gender subject from the point of view of women active in Copernicus. Far from being representative of the whole ecosystem, the replies received from 460 women who participated in the survey launched in 2020 provide a first insight into a subject that should deserve further consideration in the future. Results are available in a report "Global analysis of the survey", in an executive summary "Results of the survey, Executive summary, November 2020" and in the result section below.

Click on the images to open the full-page documents.

Infographic

Global report

Executive summary

The high answer rate we received confirms that women are well present in the value chain of the programme. We want to be visible and we all took advantage of this project to express our opinions about our jobs. The final report and the result section below are structured as the questionnaire, trying to get a better understanding of the profile of the women who participated to the survey; an overview of their job positions; how gender bias is perceived in education, work place and society; but also showing the facilitators and the proposed solutions and tools to improve gender-balance. Women want to showcase their achievements, but also to express their ideas on how to positively transform the Copernicus world. These charts are interactive, you can remove series by clicking on the legend labels. Try it to play with the results.

Visual Analysis

Who are we?
Demographics data

How we identify regarding to gender?

How old are we?

The majority of us are in their thirties, 20% being younger (under 30 years old) and 40% older (over 40 years old).

What is our highest educational degree?

What is our domain of expertise?

We have a high educational level, mainly in the field of STEM.

Percentage of women students the year we graduated

In what level of the value chain are we using Copernicus

These results show that most of us work in the operational and downstream services, work close to the users.

In what type of organization are we?

How many years of work experience do we have?

Nearly half of us work in the academic sector (43%), a quarter in private company (26%).

Background
and career

We are proud of our jobs in Copernicus with a global level of satisfaction of 3,8/5.
Our levels of technical skills and expertise and are also high (respectively 3,42 and 3,24/5).
However, our position in the hierarchy is quite low, with an average level of 2,8/5.

Facilitators

Family support and Satisfaction in the job are the main existing facilitators. Trust and acknowledgement of our participation in Copernicus could help us and the programme.

Barriers

A gender bias exists in the Copernicus ecosystem.
Many struggle to find a good balance between our private lives and professional careers.
Gender stereotypes are still well anchored in society and have been often internalised by us.
It is important for us to invert the patriarchy paradigm by acquiring more self confidence and by creating strong links among each other.

Reasons why there are less women in STEM

Stereotypes in society (68%), missing role-models (67%) and culture/marketing/television (66%) and lack of confidence (63%) are the main factors seen to influence the low number of women that make the choice of STEM in their education.

Results