This article concludes an archive series on women working in research across Europe. It considers regional patterns with particular attention to Latvia and to the impact of displacement on Ukrainian researchers.
Across Europe, women’s participation in research has grown, yet representation and influence remain uneven across disciplines, seniority levels and institutions. Eastern Europe presents a distinct part of that picture: in several countries, women have long formed a substantial share of the research workforce.
Earlier European data placed women at or above half of researchers in countries including Georgia, Latvia, Russia and Armenia. Elsewhere in the region, the balance between women and men was comparatively close. Such figures do not settle wider questions about leadership, pay, research conditions or access to resources, but they provide important context for discussing scientific careers.
Education, care and research careers
Researchers and social scientists have connected these patterns to policies and institutions developed during the Soviet period. Broad access to science education, programmes encouraging women’s participation in technical work, and public support for childcare and parental leave all helped shape who could enter professional scientific roles.
In Latvia, women’s presence in biology and chemistry classrooms has often been familiar rather than exceptional. The legacy can also be seen in established strengths across health, social and environmental research. At the same time, disciplinary boundaries are changing, with more women moving into technical and digital fields.
What participation data can and cannot show
A high share of women in the workforce is not the same as equal access to leadership, stable funding or international collaboration. Looking beyond headline proportions helps reveal how careers are actually sustained.
Funding and collaboration
For researchers working in Latvia, sustained investment remains central to building research capacity. International projects can create opportunities for collaboration, training and public-facing work, including research that helps communities prepare for climate-related change. Access to these opportunities, however, is not evenly distributed among institutes and disciplines.
Long-term support for research infrastructure and cross-border partnerships can strengthen a country’s ability to retain skilled researchers and share its findings. It also matters for early-career scientists deciding whether a sustainable academic path is available close to home.
Displacement and continuity in Ukrainian science
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine profoundly disrupted universities, laboratories and research careers. Available accounts from the early stages of displacement indicated that many researchers who left the country were women, often travelling with children or other family members. Their professional transitions took place alongside urgent practical, legal and personal responsibilities.
Host institutions across Europe have offered forms of access to laboratories, networks and temporary posts. These arrangements can help preserve research continuity and make Ukrainian scholarship more visible internationally. They cannot remove the costs of forced displacement, nor replace the stability of a functioning home institution.
For European research communities, the lesson is not simply about emergency support. It is about maintaining open, durable pathways for collaboration, recognising work developed in different institutional settings and ensuring that researchers can participate meaningfully in the networks where knowledge is shared.