The European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, Ekaterina Zaharieva, defended on Friday at the Forum Europa in Brussels the need to increase female participation in the EU's innovation sector so as not to "lose half of our continent's talent" in a context of "demographic crisis".
At an informative meeting organised by New Economy Forum in the EU capital, Zaharieva addressed the main challenges facing the European research and innovation ecosystem, including greater participation by women in this field.
Zaharieva acknowledged that "the data is not positive" in terms of female participation in innovation, despite the fact that "women outnumber men" when "they graduate and become doctors, exceeding 50%".
She stressed that the data on women "start-up founders" is insufficient and that this is a leap that the EU must take in order to compete with the major technological powers, the US and China. In her opinion, women who promote start-ups find it "more difficult to attract investment" and she considered that "we cannot afford this" because "it is not fair" and "it makes no economic sense".
The Commissioner argued that "with this demographic crisis, losing half of our continent's talent makes no economic sense" and stressed that "it is bad for our economy".
She mentioned that the EU Executive is working to "achieve gender balance" in working groups and evaluators of European programmes such as Horizon Europe, as well as promoting special initiatives to reward innovative women.
Finally, she highlighted the importance of "showing positive examples’ to ‘challenge the perception that, somehow, women cannot innovate’ and pointed out that it is also relevant to look at ‘how many women there are on the boards of venture capital companies".
