News

On 13 May 2025, the “Fair Academy” conference brought together experts for the fourth year to discuss inequalities, discrimination, and systemic barriers in the Slovak academic, research and innovation environments and to propose solutions with a view to achieving improvement. A key part of the event was a panel discussion on women in science in the Central European region, where all Visegrad countries were represented. From Hungary, the Hungarian Young Academy was represented by Veronika Barta, one of the coordinators of the Committee on the Status of Female Researchers and Researchers with Small Children. The panel discussion revealed that according to surveys, the situation of female researchers is very similar in all of the Visegrad countries. The so-called “Leaky Pipeline” phenomenon could be generally observed: that is, the proportion of women scientists is much lower in senior positions than after the doctoral level.  Perhaps the biggest difference between the four countries is that in Poland the problem is being addressed at government level and steps are being taken to attenuate the situation.