THE GENDER ISSUE IN ROMANIA BETWEEN ASPIRATIONS AND REALITY

This paper aims to draw attention to gender issue in Romania, revealing the gap remaining yet between aspirations and reality, as well as the main challenges to be overcome for reducing this gap. Thus, we consider the aspirations to gender equality as reflected by the new approaches of the topic in the literature, in the United Nations agenda on the Millennium Development Goals and in the European Union policy, with refer to the model of gender equality policies. Having this general frame of reference, we address the problem of gender differences within occupational context, focusing on the current state in the field of Research and Innovation at European and national level, as resulted from analysis of related statistics, recently published by European Commission. The overall conclusion sustained by the figures is that gender equality in research activities and higher education in our country seems to remain rather a desiderate, a matter of "politically right" statements, or a less significant problem - considered to be solved exclusively by adopting specific legislative regulations.