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V j era Lopac 1 , Bojana Hamzi ć 2 and An đ elka Tonejc 1 1 University of Zagreb, Croatia

2 nd IUPAP Conference on Women in Physics Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 23-25 May 2005 Recent Situation for Women in Physics in Croatia. V j era Lopac 1 , Bojana Hamzi ć 2 and An đ elka Tonejc 1 1 University of Zagreb, Croatia 2 Institute of Physics, Zagreb, Croatia.

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V j era Lopac 1 , Bojana Hamzi ć 2 and An đ elka Tonejc 1 1 University of Zagreb, Croatia

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  1. 2nd IUPAP Conference on Women in PhysicsRio de Janeiro, Brazil23-25 May 2005Recent Situation for Women in Physics in Croatia Vjera Lopac1, Bojana Hamzić2 and Anđelka Tonejc1 1University of Zagreb, Croatia 2Institute of Physics, Zagreb, Croatia

  2. In this report we describe the status of women physicists in Croatia and offer some statistical data illustrating the present situation. From statistics of the Croatian Physical Society, it is evident that women represent about 30% of its 700 members. Approximately half of these 200 members are active school teachers, and the remaining hundred are women physicists whose professional occupation is scientific research.

  3. Research in physics in Croatia is mainly concentrated in two institutes, the Ruđer Bošković Institute and Institute of Physics, and in the university physics departments. There are five universities in Croatia, the one in Zagreb being the largest. However, following the tradition of Central Europe, each university consists of a number of faculties. If the faculty is in the field of science or technology, in most cases it has its own department of physics. There are more than ten such departments, and the largest is the Department of Physics at the Faculty of Science of the University of Zagreb.

  4. TABLE 1. Number and percentage of women in physics in the institutes and university departments

  5. Table 1. shows the number and percentage of women physicists in different institutions with different professional status. In the two largest institutions the number of women in the highest positions is conspicuously low. Since the criteria for promotion do not depend on the institution, this can be partially attributed to the atmosphere in large institutions, which is not friendly to women. Table 1 also hints at the fact that women working there tend to stay in lower professional positions.

  6. The truth is that in large university departments, women often do not receive appropriate encouragement from their advisors and do not get promoted. They retain positions with lower pressure for publishing, but with large teaching duties and lower salaries. Smaller institutions seem to be more pleasant places for women to work successfully. There they have more opportunities than in the large departments to make independent decisions vital to their careers. These results can be compared with numbers of obtained university degrees and promotions since 1996, given in Table 2.

  7. TABLE 2. Number and percentage of women obtaining academic degrees in physics before and after 2002.

  8. The time is divided into two intervals, from 1996 to 2001, and from 2002 to 2004. The fraction of women oriented to higher research studies (M.Sc. and Ph.D.) is around one-third for both periods, which is higher than is their percentage in jobs after graduation. However, the decreasing number of women obtaining non-teaching B.Sc. degrees in the last three years is slightly alarming, since it reflects the tendency that women are now less interested in physics research. The result is quite different for the teaching-oriented studies: women are nearly two thirds, and this fact remains unchanged with time.

  9. Interesting are also the numbers and percentages of women in typical activities reflecting the excellence in their domain shown in Table 3. These are the number of leaders of the scientific projects presently sponsored by the Ministry of Science (for research), the number of supervisors of the B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. thesis in physics since 1996 (for higher education), and the number of secondary school teachers actively participating in the 7th Croatian Symposium on Physics Education (May 2005) (for the secondary education).

  10. TABLE3. Number and percentage of women participating in the activities reflecting excellence in research and teaching

  11. As far as legal issues are concerned, women in Croatia have certain advantages. There is one year of maternity leave, but its second half is poorly paid. Parents can choose how to share part of this leave between themselves. Kindergartens and day care for children are well organized and affordable, but their working hours are very inconvenient for scientist parents. In previous generations the grandparents were extremely helpful, but now they tend to work themselves as long as possible, especially as they often have to help younger generations supporting their basic needs for housing and transportation.

  12. In the social context, women scientists are more recognized and appreciated than they were in the past. Recently they have obtained administrative positions as deans, rectors or presidents of different boards, which was very rare before. However, this is still more obvious in chemistry and biology than in physics. There is no open discrimination in any segment, although unpleasant comments or insinuations still can be heard. Since 2003, when the Working Group on Women in Physics was established within Croatian Physical Society, with its activities and its website, the awareness of these problems has increased.

  13. An additional help in this direction is the new law (Gender Equality Act, 2003) , which condemns rigorously any kind of discriminating behavior. However, it has to be stressed that physics and scientific research generally is rather low on the ladder of social recognition. Studying science is not considered in families as something very profitable, either for men or for women. Many talented young people do not consider academic careers at all and leave science as soon as possible for more lucrative jobs in management or media. The brain drain is another problem. The young scientists, especially physicists, often tend to stay abroad for extended time periods after their postdoctoral leaves.

  14. Many sociological inferences can be made from these results. Women physicists nowadays generally tend to marry and have children. The attitudes still prevail that woman should not be encouraged to obtain highest degrees, and that the wife should have a lower professional degree than her husband. Interestingly, this prejudice is more common among colleagues and advisors than with husbands themselves, since if the woman physicist remains in the marriage, it means that the husband understands and accepts the difficulties of her profession. Although sometimes it can be heard that it is preferable in Croatia to have a physicist husband, this has no supportin the real statistics.

  15. In conclusion, whereas the percentage of women participating in the natural sciences research and higher education institutions in Croatia has increased in the last several years, so that they are about 50% in chemistry and more than 60% in biology, in physics they remain around 20%, which is still larger than in many developed countries. There are no particular measures that would stimulate women’s engagement in science, but also there is no direct gender discrimination.

  16. Women in Croatia have equal rights in education and in getting positions in the academic and research institutions, and there are no gender differences in salaries. However, a significant under-representation of women physicists at highest professional levels and in the decision–making positions is still present. Many of these conclusions and results are typical for transitional economic and regional situation of Croatia, but we are now aware of the problem and hope that this will be improved in the future.

  17. Croatian Physical Society - Physics in Croatia http://www.hfd.hr/    Working Group on Women in Physics of Croatian Physical Society http://www.hfd.hr/zene_u_fizici/ Prof. dr. sc. Anđelka Tonejc, PMF, Zagreb,   andelka@phy.hrDr. sc. Bojana Hamzić, IFS, Zagreb, bhamzic@ifs.hrDr. sc. Vlasta Mohaček-Grošev, IRB, Zagreb,  mohacek@irb.hr 

  18. University of Split http://www.pmfst.hr/ Physics in High School http://www.prvagimnazija.hr/fizika/ Institute of Physics, Zagreb http://www.ifs.hr/ University of Rijeka http://www.uniri.hr/English_home.htm/

  19. Ruđer Bošković Institute http://www.irb.hr/ University of Zagreb Physics Departments http://www.phy.hr/ http://fizika.fkit.hr/ http://www.mef.hr/fizika/ http://www.zpf.fer.hr/ http://www.pharma.hr/bf/

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