Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

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Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020
2017, according to the new classification system). In 
the higher education sector it is noticeable that the 
growth in employment in terms of headcount is sig-
nificantly higher than when measured by full-time 
equivalent positions; this is largely attributable to 
the incidence of part-time positions. Growth in the 
business enterprise sector is also higher in terms of 
headcount, and corresponds roughly to the overall 
trend, which is very much influenced by the size of 
the enterprise sector. R&D expenditure per full-time 
equivalent position has only grown at a moderate 
rate, in nominal terms by 12.2% across all sectors of 
performance. 
Women in R&D 
The proportion of women working in R&D rose slight-
ly from 2007 to 2017. The proportion of female R&D 
employees compared to the total has increased, in 
terms of full-time equivalent (FTE) positions, from 
23.7% to 24.2%, i.e. the proportion has increased by 
2.1%. This growth has primarily occurred in research 
personnel, while the proportions of non-research per-
sonnel in R&D units have decreased significantly, as 
can be seen in Fig. 1.8.
The overall perspective, across all sectors, shows 
that: the higher the proportion of women was 
amongst research staff in 2007, the less this in-
creased by 2017. In the private non-profit sector, 
where the ratio of women in 2007 was over 50%, this 
proportion has actually decreased. Women currently 
make up 36.4% of researchers in the higher educa-
tion sector and 35.8% of those in the public sector. 
Institutions that are predominantly or completely 
government organisations overall employ far more 
female researchers than the business enterprise sec-
tor does; in the latter, the proportion of women did in 
fact increase by 20.7% between 2007 and 2017, but 
in 2017 was still only 16.1%.
Fig. 1-9 shows that despite this increase over the 
period 2007–2017, the proportion of female research-
ers in Austria is lower than in most OECD countries. 
In fact, amongst the countries shown here, for the 
relevant observation period Austria has fallen behind 
Luxembourg and is now in last place. In international 
comparisons it is noticeable that countries with a 
medium income level – and here it is particularly 
those with formerly centralised economies – have 
the highest levels. The top seven consist of four 
countries (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia) that 
were part of the Council for Mutual Economic Assis-
tance (COMECON), and three southern European 
countries (Portugal, Greece, Spain). The proportion of 
women amongst R&D personnel in the business en-
terprise sector is relatively small throughout Europe, 
and frequently lower than that in the higher educa-
tion sector or the government sector. Countries with 
a small proportion of R&D in the business enterprise 
sector therefore often show relatively high propor-
tions of women. In contrast, leading research coun-
tries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and 
France show low ratios of female researchers; in all 
the countries listed the proportion of women in 2017 
was below one third.