In the last decades the presence of women in public research centres is increasing, but their participation in ICT areas is lower than their male counterparts. In this paper we attempt to analyze the position occupied by women in ICT related public research institutions. In order to achieve such a goal, we collected diverse information about Spanish research teams in public institutions in order to know more about the participation and position of women in these groups. The key topics are related to basic characteristics of the research groups, the implementation of equality measures and the strategies carried out by female dominated research groups to attract other women. A comparison between female dominated research groups and other groups is carried out in order to find possible gender gaps in the attainment of research excellence.

The topics of the database of Public Research Groups are:
- Institution
- Centre
- Department
- Group
- Person in charge of the group
- Sex distribution of group members
- Number of PhD
- Labour category in institution
- Number and type of projects (regional, national, international)
- Number and type of publication (books, chapters, relevant journals, etc.)
- Web Page
- Contact (phone, email…)

This database is the first step to carry out our investigation. Then, and in order to validate the information gathered in the database and to obtain more data about the research groups, we designed a questionnaire survey about the research activity of the groups, the position and situation of women in the research teams and other questions relative to the implementation of equal opportunities for men and women in the institutions and research groups.

In this paper we also tackle the analysis of a fragmentation of this large information: the position of women in ICT groups and their scientific production in order to know the existence of gender differences. As we have confirmed the low presence of women in the research groups and the vertical segregation that women suffer, we want to examine the type of opportunities these women have in the research groups they are working for.

We have four hypotheses. Firstly, scientific production (articles, books, chapters…) is similar for men and women. Secondly, research groups with a woman leading them tend to attract more women to the team than research groups with a male leader. Thirdly, women are concentrated in some areas to ICT, related to health and sociability topics. Fourthly, women have a similar presence in European projects than men, but less in business contracts.

Keywords: Gender, scientific production, ICT, equality.