Mr President, I should like to start by thanking Mrs McNally who was unable, due to unavoidable commitments, to stay and present the report herself. Women and science – Mobilising women to enrich European research. The communication proposes two objectives: the first is to stimulate discussion between the Member States and promote best practice in the encouragement of women in the fields of science and technology. The second is to increase the number of women involved in research supported by the Union, thereby meeting the Union’s Treaty commitments to equal opportunities and enriching research, i.e. to implement gender mainstreaming. Expenditure on research and technology is the third most important section of the European Union budget, after agriculture and the Structural Funds. We welcome the Commission’s communication and its objectives and invite the Member States to pursue the objective of gender equality and to cooperate with the Commission. We invite the Commission to produce comparable and improved data on the subject of Women and Science, to propose guidelines and further action and to deliver a special report to us here in Parliament within two years. The Commission will henceforth be working for more comparable data on women scientists and will arrange meetings between relevant parties and organise two major conferences which will bring together national civil servants, women scientists and all interested parties. The rapporteur expressly welcomes the measures already taken under the fifth framework research programme to increase the involvement of women and to insist that 40% of those participating in both the Marie Curie scholarships and all advisory committees are women and to incorporate the measures already proposed for the sixth framework programme. Women have traditionally been under-represented in scientific research and the women’s movement has had to fight hard to achieve the present position. At the beginning of the century, the first female Europeans attended university in Finland. However, university strongholds are still dominated by men and yet today nearly half the students are women. In my home country of Germany, for example, women entrants outnumbered men for the first time in 1995. The average ratio in Europe is 103 women to 100 men. Germany is bringing up the rear in the EU with 77 women to 100 men. In all events, more women than men graduate, at a ratio of 110:100. In Germany and Ireland this figure is lower. Two-thirds of female students now choose languages and humanities; more impetus is needed in the natural sciences. An understanding of natural sciences and technology must be fostered in the home and promoted generally through education, in school, in the kindergarten, everywhere and new paths must be opened. Coeducation is not always the only way forward; single-sex education can also provide an impetus, especially in the natural sciences and technology. However, the new potential to qualify which women now have has still not been implemented in practice; the situation regarding staffing at technical colleges is still disastrous and the number of ordinary chairs in the Union is 5%, hardly any higher than at the beginning of the century in the 1920s. However, equal opportunities for women in science must also bring about more input from women as regards content. Women and gender research must be seen as basic research which is of enormous importance to the European Union. The Member States must develop new instruments to increase the unused potential of all women in research and teaching and promote exchanges of experience. Networks of women scientists must be supported and innovative projects promoted and disseminated. For example, Spain and Italy are demonstrating a higher proportion of women in the natural sciences. This must be investigated more closely. There are also examples in Germany: Expo 2000 in Hanover in the summer will stage a 100-day international women’s university for technology and culture. One thousand budding female scientists and 100 female professors are working there on an interdisciplinary, research-orientated programme in seven project areas: intelligence, information, the body, water, the city, work and migration. These valuable experiences will be carefully combined and evaluated so that a decision can be taken as to whether the university can be continued as a virtual campus with modern information technologies. As a founder member of the women’s university, I am convinced that this think tank will show us how to resolve many of our problems. In the interests of European research and its position with reference to globalisation, the EU must not miss a single opportunity. Another chance will be the UN Peking +5 conference due to take place in the middle of the year in New York. This will take stock of successes and failures in achieving the objectives. The people with political responsibility in the European Union and in all the Member States must take consistent action to ensure that we make structural changes to framework conditions in conjunction with the governors of technical colleges, the boards of research institutes and the economy and introduce a process of change which implements the requirement to safeguard equal opportunities prescribed in the Treaty of Amsterdam. Our future lies in the 21st Century, as the rapporteur, Mrs McNally, has quite rightly demonstrated. We are not talking about cosmetic changes here; we need to make courageous incisions. Once again our warmest thanks to the rapporteur, Mrs McNally.

Political group: PSE