If you ask a kid to draw a scientist, they will draw a “mad scientist” with sticking up hair in a white lab coat, probably holding a test tube containing some evil-looking smoking liquid: an amalgam of Einstein and Frankenstein. Oh yes, and they’ll be male. Based on new research, this stereotype isn’t going anywhere. The L’Oreal Foundation have just published the results of a survey they carried out across Europe, asking around 5000 people their views and perceptions of scientists. The answers shocked me.

Based on the responses recorded in the study, it would seem that overall 67% of Europeans think that women do not possess the required skill set in order to achieve high-level scientific positions (the figure is 64% specifically for the UK). Meanwhile, in China an absolutely staggering 93% believe that women aren’t cut out to be scientists.

With this level of incredulity about women being capable of doing science, we shouldn’t be astonished that the speed of women rising to the top of the profession is as glacially slow as it is. It also suggests that we shouldn’t be surprised when teachers (and indeed parents) don’t encourage girls to stick with science post-16. Often they do this without even noticing what they’re doing.

When asked for which fields women do possess the right aptitude, 89% of the survey’s respondents said ‘anything but science’, whilst favouring the social sciences, communication and languages as being suitable. When asked what impeded women’s rise to the top, both men and women said cultural factors were important. However, 45% of women believed that men blocked women’s progression, and 44% of them (compared with 37% of men) said there was a problem in the support management provided for women.

These figures are truly dismal. Despite all the negative connotations around women in science, those questioned actually thought there were more of us female scientists out there than there really are. They estimated that women hold 28% of the highest academic functions within scientific fields across the European Union. The reality? There are around 11% women at the top.

Whether or not you think a scientist needs make-up, L’Oreal should be commended for everything they do to promote Women in Science in conjunction with UNESCO . (I am of course a beneficiary, having won their 2009 L’Oreal/Unesco Laureate for Europe). They offer financial support to many early career women through their national fellowship schemes and aim to create a multitude of role models – with accompanying imagery and life stories – for the next generations.

This current campaign, headed up by Nobel Prize Winner Elizabeth Blackburn, is entitled ‘change the numbers’, with a view to seeing more women join her in that rare club of female Nobel Prize winners, currently crawling along at around 3% of all winners. This goal can only be achieved if more girls and young women enter the profession in the first place.

Any female scientist may or may not be impeded by men and management (as the answers suggest), but she will definitely be surrounded by a crowd of people who do not believe she is likely to succeed. If the people she talks to in the cinema queue, in the bar or the student union are prone to say ‘really?’ when she admits to loving science and aiming high, the drip-drip-drip of negativity is liable to sap self-confidence and aspiration.

Collectively Jo(e) Public just doesn’t seem to have much faith that women can and should be scientists. Only when gender becomes irrelevant to how people view the person at the bench will equality in the lab even start to be a reality.