Most of Eastern Europe spent 50 years under socialist political systems that declared women emancipation in all spheres of life, including professionally (1). Participation in the labour force was not just allowed or incentivised, but often regarded as patriotic. It helped that good childcare and educational systems allowed women to achieve a satisfactory life-work balance. However, certain professions were still dominated by men, namely all those dimmed as dangerous or physically demanding, hence women concentrated on white-collar jobs. These were particularly at risk during the economic crisis following the fall of communism and the transition to open economies. Cuts to social spending and to state jobs forced many women out of the labour force or saw their pay drastically reduced. In the last decade many Eastern European countries have seen an expansion of their economies and convergence with western living standards. A new paper by Zsuzsanna Deák from the University of Budapest has tried to assess whether this situation translated into an improvement for women in science (2). In most of the Eastern European countries analysed, women participation in tertiary education (toward a doctoral degree) is similar to that of the European Union average (at around 40%). Dr Deák looked at whether this meant that women had advanced to leadership positions by analysing authorship of articles in the top 500 scientific journals. The answer is “no”; she found that female authorship correlated negatively with journal prestige ranking. Moreover, women are still underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The reason for this bias could be a mixture of historic and cultural factors; to combat those, Dr Deák highlights the importance of promoting gender equality policies. Photo: Proportion (%) of women in Hungary at various levels, 2023. (Z. Deák) Read more: 1) https://doi.org/10.1016/S0967-067X(01)00006-X 2) https://doi.org/10.1109/SISY62279.2024.10737547