In 2025, more than 81.6 million people in the EU aged 15 to 74 were employed in science and technology, a 1.8% increase from 2024 (corresponding to 1.5 million of people) and a rise of 25.3% over the last decade.
Of the 81.6 million people, 52.5% were women (42.8 million), working mainly in service activities. Their share increased by 2.3% compared with 2024 and by an impressive 27.9% compared with 2015, corresponding to an absolute increase of more than 9.3 million women in science and technology occupations in the past 10 years.
Science and technology occupations are those, in which the main tasks require a high level of professional knowledge or technical knowledge and experience in 1 or more fields of physical and life sciences, or social sciences and humanities.
Across the EU regions at level 1 of the Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS 1), the highest shares of women employed in science and technology in 2025 were observed in Latvia, with 62.4% (a single region at this level of detail), followed by the Hungarian region of Great Plain and North, with 61.1%, and Estonia (also a single region at this level), with 60.5%.
At the other end of the scale, the lowest shares were recorded in the French region of Corsica (42.7%), Malta (46.0%) and the Centre region in Italy (47.2%).
Source dataset: hrst_st_rsex
Women underrepresented as scientists and engineers
Scientists and engineers are an important subgroup of all people employed in science and technology in the EU, representing almost a quarter (24.8%).
Germany employed the largest share across the EU countries, with 4.2 million scientists and engineers.
Although women made up more than half of the people employed in science and technology, they remained underrepresented among scientists and engineers, accounting for 40.8% of their total in 2025. This share grew only 0.5 percentage points over the last 10 years, while the absolute number of women working as scientists and engineers increased by 54.4% in that period, from 5.3 million in 2015 to 8.2 million in 2025.
