The Europe 2020 strategy aims to make the EU a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy by delivering employment, increasing productivity and securing social cohesion. The Innovation Union – one of the seven flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 strategy – aims at supporting activities undertaken to reach goals included in the strategy Europe 2020, mainly through improving access to funding scientific research and innovations in Europe. The importance of the planned initiatives relating to strengthen European innovation is reflected in an ambitious budget of new research and innovation funding programme for the years 2014-2020 - Horizon 2020 – which has been set on a level of €80 billion. One of the supporting measures for achieving the goals of the strategy is increasing the human resources employed in science and technology and making better use of the resources and the qualifications of highly-skilled women in science and technological innovation.

Analyses on the European level prove that EU is far from gender equality in R&D activities. The prevailing imbalances are observed in the number and seniority in respective professions. The closer look at the European data reveals however, that Poland is clearly distinctive in that matter, as shares of women and man are more balanced or in some cases in favor of the former. All 6 regions (NUTS 1 level) of Poland are on the EU top 20 list of regions according to  the employment of women resources in science and technology in terms of occupation. The paper investigates closer the current situation in Poland and tries to offer a wider perspective by means of international comparisons. The systematization of data sources useful in the analyses, as well as concepts, methods and definitions used is also offered. The statistics presented come from the collection and processing the data on R&D personnel and human resources in science and technology. The former are produced according to the Frascati Manual, the latter are based on the Canberra Manual.

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