Overall Participation in Research
According to UNESCO, 28% of researchers and 43% of PhD students in science and engineering are female [1]. But there’s a lot of variability between countries - for example, in many of the former Soviet bloc states, as well as Malaysia and the Philippines, the number of women researchers equals or exceeds male researchers in the natural sciences. Gender parity is also present in many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (Bolivia, Venezuela, Argentina, and Paraguay have more female than male researchers). Women are generally well represented in the medical sciences, but very poorly represented in engineering.
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| Figure 1. Authorship and gender composition in the JSTOR network dataset. Shaded bars = male authorships, unshaded bars = female authorships. Black line = fraction of authorships that are women, red line = fraction of first authorships that are women, blue line = fraction of last authorships that are women. West, J.D., et al., 2013. The Role of Gender in Scholarly Authorship. PLoS One |
Publications are scientific currency. Whether a researcher is looking for a new job, or a department is seeking more funding, the number and quality of publications is very often the difference between success and failure [2].
In total, fewer than 30% of authors of scientific papers (in any authorship position) are women. In neuroscience, only about a third of authors of papers in “high-impact” journals are women. A few countries are doing admirably though: women make up more than 50% of authors in Finland, Poland, and Argentina who publish in top neuroscience journals.
An analysis of the JSTOR corpus in 2013 found that more and more women are publishing as first authors, from about 9% in the 1960's to 31% nowadays, possibly reflecting the increasing proportion of female graduate students [3]. But in the same timeframe, the proportion of last authorships (in biomedical research, a prestigious position reserved for “senior authors”, usually group leaders) by women has increased by just 8%.
FEMALE PHD STUDENTS ARE LESS LIKELY TO BE LISTED
AS AUTHORS
THAN THEIR MALE COUNTERPARTS
Women are particularly underrepresented as last authors in cell and molecular biology, a field where authorship position matters a great deal [4]. In six leading medical journals, however, senior authorship by females rose sharply from 3.7% to 19.3% from 1970 to 2004 [5]. This underrepresentation might reflect less access to research resources by women, who are more likely to work in low-resource institutions and spend more time teaching than men, than discrimination by journals [6].
A somewhat alarming finding, however, is that female PhD students are less likely to be listed as authors than their male counterparts for the same effort. A recent study followed 336 biology PhD students from 53 institutions throughout the first four years of their programs [7]. They found that, compared to females, males were 15% more likely to author a journal article for every 100 hours they spent on “research tasks”.
Conference Participation
This one is closely related to publication output. There’s very little data out there on gender balance in conference participation in general (posters, oral presentations), but arguably what really counts in terms of career progression are invited talks. These boost a scientist’s visibility and supports their establishment as a successful researcher.
Jonathan Eisen, a microbiologist at UC Davis, has a collection of self-compiled statistics on different conferences and meetings in his field [8]. His results are far from reassuring - many conferences have no female invited speakers, and the ratios in the others are far from balanced (Professor Eisen often declines invitations from conferences with a marked lack of diversity). In an analysis of participation by gender at emergency medicine conferences, 30% of the speakers were women [9]. A similar figure was found in the language neurobiology field [10].
Peer Review
Being invited to review manuscripts for a journal indicates that your colleagues recognize and appreciate your work. Regular exposure to manuscripts and gaining experience in critically evaluating other’s work also likely benefits one’s own research, ultimately fuelling career progress.
Even when taking into account the unbalanced gender ratios in science, women take less part in peer review than men. In an analysis of the 20 journals of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), 20% of reviewers were female, substantially less than the proportion of female first authors in the field (27%) [11]. The explanation wasn’t that editors sought out more senior researchers (who are mostly men), because the low peer review participation was evident across age groups. The study also found that women received fewer invitations by editors and declined them more often than men. In contrast, female editors of the journal Functional Ecology recommended more often female reviewers, who were more likely to agree to review a manuscript than male reviewers [12].
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| Figure 2. Numbers of grants awarded to men and women for different scientific disciplines in the Netherlands, 2010 - 2012. van der Lee, R., Ellemers, N., 2015. Gender contributes to personal research funding success in The Netherlands. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. |
In the UK [13] and the US [14], women and men are equally successful in acquiring funding for biomedical research. However, even when accounting for experience, female applicants were awarded almost 45,000 GBP less funding than male applicants from the Wellcome Trust between 2000 and 2008 [15]. Similar results were found in an analysis of infectious disease research funding awarded from private and public sources between 1997 and 2010 [16]. Women received 54,000 GBP less funding than men, with no improvement over the past 14 years.
MEN WERE EIGHT TIMES MORE LIKELY TO WIN A
SCIENTIFIC AWARD
Male applicants for personal grants in the Netherlands had a 20% higher success rate and were perceived as more competent than female colleagues despite similar appraisals of proposal quality [17]. The only field where female success rates were higher than male’s was medical science.
Unfortunately, these discrepancies are not being remedied by the increasing participation of women in science - men continue to receive more than their expected share of scientific prizes (the so-called “Matilda effect”). Between 2000 and 2010, men were eight times more likely to win a scientific award in the physical sciences, mathematics, and biomedicine than women [18]. The same study found that, even when adjusting for the representation of the genders in the pool of nominees for a particular award, men were twice as likely to win than women.
Progress for Science, Through Science
By and large, women are grossly underrepresented in science and they receive less recognition for their work than their male colleagues, a classic vicious cycle. Investigating these gender discrepancies and finding potential solutions should be made a priority. But first we need to recognize that the issue’s complexity warrants the same systematic and rigorous approach that we dedicate to our work as scientists. Striving for equality for the sake of fairness, while extremely important, is only one part of the story. The status quo is such a waste of precious potential - just think about how much more could be done if gender equality in science were a reality.
by Ahmed Khalil, PhD Student AG Fiebach
this article originally appeared March 2017 in "Diversity in Neuroscience"
[1] UNESCO Science Report, 2015
[2] van Dijk et al., Current Biology, 2014
[3] González-Álvarez and Cervera-Crespo, Journal of Informetrics, 2017
[4] Wren et al., EMBO Reports, 2007
[5] Jagsi et al., NEJM, 2006
[6] Ceci and Williams, PNAS, 2011
[7] Feldon et al., CBE Life Sci Educ, 2016
[8] http://bit.ly/2knYv0N
[9] Carley et al., Emerg Med J, 2016
[10] Peelle, The Winnower, 2016
[11] Lerback and Hanson, Nature, 2017
[12] Fox et al., Funct Ecol, 2016
[13] Blake and La Valle, National Centre for Social Research, 2000
[14] Hosek et al., National Science Foundation, 2005
[15] Bedi et al., Lancet, 2012
[16] Head et al., BMJ Open 2013
[17] van der Lee and Ellemers, PNAS, 2015
[18] Lincoln et al., Soc Stud Sci, 2012
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