The number of women authoring scientific papers is increasing, but men still dominate overall and some fields won鈥檛 reach gender equity until the next century, according to a major analysis.
at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and at the University of Montreal in聽Canada analysed nearly 5.5聽million scientific papers published between 2008 and 2020, using a machine-learning algorithm to estimate the likelihood that a person鈥檚 name belonged to a man or woman.
Names that were 10 times as聽likely to be assigned to a聽man聽than a woman were considered to belong to men, and vice versa. Around a quarter of names couldn鈥檛 be classified in聽this way, so the pair excluded them from the rest of the analysis. They also didn鈥檛 include any other genders in their work.
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The pair found that, in聽general, the percentage of聽women contributing to scientific papers increased each year. For example, only 43聽per cent of authors in psychology were women in 2008, but this figure reached 50 per cent in 2021. Extrapolating forwards, they estimate that men and women will reach equal levels of聽authorship in biology in 2069聽and chemistry in 2087.
However, many sciences won鈥檛 achieve parity until the聽next century, based on current rates of progress. The pair found that engineering will聽only reach gender parity in聽2144, while mathematics and physics will have to wait until 2146 and 2158, respectively.
They also found that papers written by women for high-profile journals such as Nature and Cell were less cited than those written by men for the same publications. 鈥淚t points to聽some kind of bias in the system,鈥� says Larivi猫re. He is unsure as to what may explain the discrepancy. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not specific to one field,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really there in every discipline.鈥�
The pair鈥檚 research is part of a聽book called Equity for Women in Science, which is due to be published later this year and details the many ways that scientists, policy-makers, funders of research and science聽communicators can聽help to close this gap.
鈥淭here are no quick fixes,鈥� says Sugimoto. 鈥淎t a micro level,聽scientists need to change how they recruit students and how they promote.鈥�
鈥淨uotas work: they are ways for people to go beyond what is聽their gut reflexes of what鈥檚 in聽their close networks and actually find the people that contribute to the diversity of the scientific community,鈥� she says.
On a wider level, funding agencies and institutions need to hold themselves accountable for increasing diversity in science, says Sugimoto.
Having equity in science between men and women is important for multiple reasons, says Sugimoto. 鈥淭he diversity in聽the scientific workforce changes the content of research聽and it makes research more representative of the population,鈥� she says. 鈥淭his expands the breadth of possible聽questions.鈥�
at Flinders University in Australia says this聽research makes clear that聽systems have to change, not聽women themselves.
鈥淕ender equity in science and STEM holds so much promise for new ideas, perspectives and solutions,鈥� she says. 鈥淲ithout the inclusion of half the world鈥檚 population, we are not working at optimal levels.鈥�
