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Women have attained a high level of equality in the European nations led by the Northern European countries such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden, which have amongst the highest rankings from the UN for gender equity. Almost all the members of the European Economic Community have adopted CEDAW (the UN's Convention of Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women). As a consequence, the majority of these nations have established governmental quotas for women with France as the latest country to do so. Women are on par with men in terms of access to primary, secondary and tertiary education throughout Europe. In terms of entry into high-tech, Europe also spends about 30% of the global research and development expenditures in science and technology, second only to the US, which is at 38%. Moreover, Europe has approximately the same number of Internet users as the US of which women are approximately half. Also, women comprise 19% of the technical and professional workforce throughout Western Europe. However, as in other regions of the world, women are clustered more densely in the service industries. Eastern Europe
Like Russia, in recent history, women have completed high levels of education in the Eastern European countries. In fact, it is one that is on par with the men. In conjunction with education, women also have maintained a long tradition of working outside the home. Moreover, traditionally women have comprised a large percentage of the technical workers, scientists and engineers in these countries (13% for women and 10% for men in 1998). However, Eastern Europe's economy has suffered due to the unplanned liberalization of their financial structures, and this has had the largest impact on women's unemployment, which far exceeds the unemployment figures for men. Moreover, in Eastern Europe, women's rights have never been very well defined because the assumption was that the socialist governments would establish equity embedded in the premise of their socialist policies. However, although this strategy did improve the lives of women compared to other regions of the world at the time, it did not put women on equal footing with men. Currently more is being done to promote gender equity as they join the European Economic Community (EEC) which enforces strict policies as outlined by CEDAW and the UN. Regardless, these countries have very conservative male dominated cultures, which have been slow to change.
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Poland 
