Assessment of the share of women in the scientific and pedagogical staff: data from modern countries

Abstract

Introduction. Currently, higher education is important in the training of highly qualified specialists, the creation of new knowledge, and the introduction of innovations. Objectives. The purpose of our study was to evaluate the indicators characterizing the gender structure of scientific and pedagogical personnel in higher educational institutions of various countries. These indicators were the share of female teachers in the total number of teachers of higher educational institutions. Methodology. We used data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics for 107 countries. We used the density functions of the normal distribution as models. Results. The results of the computational experiment showed that the share of female teaching staff in the number of scientific and pedagogical staff on average in the countries under consideration was 41.6%. Women make up more than half of the teaching staff in twenty-four countries. The predominance of men as teachers of higher education institutions was in seventy-eight countries. The countries with the maximum and minimum values of such indicators as the share of female teachers in the scientific and pedagogical staff were identified. A significant difference was proved for groups of countries with maximum and minimum values of indicators. Contribution. The proposed methodological approach and the results obtained have a scientific novelty, since the assessment of the territorial features of the gender structure of teachers of higher educational institutions has not previously been paid attention in scientific research.