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A case study on gender gap in Massachusetts maritime academy
(American Society for Engineering Education, 2017)
Maleki, F.S.
;
Stephens, G.M.
It has been hypothesized and research has shown that diversity in the workforce can enhance creativity, improve problem solving, and ultimately improve a company's bottom line. Historically women have been underrepresented in engineering and more specifically in marine engineering and maritime industries. In this paper we will explore some of the possible reasons behind the considerable gender gap between male and female engineering enrollments at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy (MMA); including, but not limited to a lack of role models, especially in key positions; cultural stereotypes; impediments perceived or actual to careers in maritime or engineering industries, and media bias. This research will investigate a simple question across all MMA engineering majors: why are so few female students interested in becoming engineers at MMA. MMA's enrollment data and growth rate of female cadets over the last decade have been studied. Important parameters associated with this growth have been investigated. By the use of statistical analysis, SAT scores of the target demographic have been analyzed. The results of this analysis was used to find any meaningful deviation between male and female applicants. Additionally, through the use of a survey the priorities of target population in college selection and anticipated major has been assessed. Results of an analysis of SAT scores showed that female engineers score 12.6% higher than female non-engineers on the Math SAT and 9.7% higher in the composite score. The survey results revealed that while media bias and cultural stereotypes had minimal influence on female student's decision to apply to MMA, role models were an important motivational factor. Also, more than 77% learned of opportunities at the Academy through their family member rather than usual college inquiry and selection process. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2017.
Does a gender-neutral name associate with the research impact of a scientist? Open PDF
(2022)
Zhang, N.
;
He, G.
;
Shi, D.
;
Zhao, Z.
;
Li, J.
Women have long suffered in both academia and industry from lower status, underrepresentation, unequal treatment, and other challenges based on gender. This paper explores whether a gender-neutral name is associated with the research impact of a scientist by examining three years of citations. The data for this study are derived from publications indexed in ISI's Web of Science (WoS) database from 2009 to 2015. By assigning a name neutralization index score to each author, we investigate the relationship between the neutralization index and citations and find the following results: (1) generally, the more neutral the name, the more citations the publications received; (2) the neutral effect was more pronounced for authors with feminine names than for authors with masculine names. © 2022
Gender bias in patenting process Open PDF
(2020)
Wang, Y.
;
Yang, Z.
;
Liu, L.
;
Wang, X.
Collaboration among inventors is very important in patenting an invention. Inventors collaborate based on their professional knowledge and experience. Because of the non-disclosure nature of the invention process, it is difficult to test the factors influencing collaboration between inventors, e.g., gender bias. In this study, employing the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) dataset with 6.64 million patents, we have identified the gender of 4.66 million inventors, including 2.12 million lead inventors and 2.54 million joint inventors. We find that women are underrepresented in the patent collaboration process and that both genders have strong preference for same-gender inventors. Moreover, even in those fields that have equal proportions of male and female inventors, gender bias persists. These results highlight the need to intensify efforts to combat gender bias in the patenting process rather than focusing solely on the lack of equal gender representation in the numerical proportions. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd.
A gender equality paradox in academic publishing: Countries with a higher proportion of female first-authored journal articles have larger first-author gender disparities between fields Open PDF
(2020)
Thelwall, M.
;
Mas-Bleda, A.
Current attempts to address the shortfall of female researchers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have not yet succeeded, despite other academic subjects having female majorities. This article investigates the extent to which gender disparities are subject-wide or nation-specific by a first-author gender comparison of 30 million articles from all 27 Scopus broad fields within the 31 countries with the most Scopus-indexed articles 2014–2018. The results show overall and geocultural patterns as well as individual national differences. Almost half of the subjects were always more male (seven; e.g., Mathematics) or always more female (six; e.g., Immunology & Microbiology) than the national average. A strong overall trend (Spearman correlation 0.546) is for countries with a higher proportion of female first-authored research to also have larger differences in gender disparities between fields (correlation 0.314 for gender ratios). This confirms the international gender equality paradox previously found for degree subject choices: Increased gender equality overall associates with moderately greater gender differentiation between subjects. This is consistent with previous United States-based claims that gender differences in academic careers are partly due to (socially constrained) gender differences in personal preferences. Radical solutions may therefore be needed for some STEM subjects to overcome gender disparities. © 2020 Mike Thelwall and Amalia Mas-Bleda. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.
No evidence of citation bias as a determinant of STEM gender disparities in US biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology research Open PDF
(2019)
Thelwall, M.
;
Nevill, T.
The lack of females in many Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects in the USA is an ongoing concern, with many initiatives attempting to redress this imbalance. Some life sciences are apparently areas of relatively good practice, with higher proportions of female researchers than most other STEM subjects. This paper assesses gender differences in research contributions to 14 biochemistry, genetics or molecular biology specialisms in the USA 1996–2014/8, seeking evidence of trends in publishing and citation impact that may give insights into female success. With four exceptions (biochemistry, biophysics, biotechnology, and structural biology), the fields achieved or maintained at least 40% female first authors by 2018, with developmental biology and endocrinology both attaining female first author majorities. A regression analysis found close to gender parity overall in citation impact but a small male first author citation advantage in more fields than the opposite: an up to 3% increase in logged citation ratio to the world mean. This was partly due to males first authoring with larger teams. Fields with relatively many females did not favour female-led research with more citations, however. © 2019, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary.
Do females create higher impact research? Scopus citations and Mendeley readers for articles from five countries Open PDF
(2018)
Thelwall, M.
There are known gender imbalances in participation in scientific fields, from female dominance of nursing to male dominance of mathematics. It is not clear whether there is also a citation imbalance, with some claiming that male-authored research tends to be more cited. No previous study has assessed gender differences in the readers of academic research on a large scale, however. In response, this article assesses whether there are gender differences in the average citations and/or Mendeley readers of academic publications. Field normalised logged Scopus citations and Mendeley readers from mid-2018 for articles published in 2014 were investigated for articles with first authors from India, Spain, Turkey, the UK and the USA in up to 251 fields with at least 50 male and female authors. Although female-authored research is less cited in Turkey (-4.0%) and India (-3.6%), it is marginally more cited in Spain (0.4%), the UK (0.4%), and the USA (0.2%). Female-authored research has fewer Mendeley readers in India (-1.1%) but more in Spain (1.4%), Turkey (1.1%), the UK (2.7%) and the USA (3.0%). Thus, whilst there may be little practical gender difference in citation impact in countries with mature science systems, the higher female readership impact suggests a wider audience for female-authored research. The results also show that the conclusions from a gender analysis depend on the field normalisation method. A theoretically informed decision must therefore be made about which normalisation to use. The results also suggest that arithmetic mean-based field normalisation is favourable to males. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Gender differences in citation impact for 27 fields and six english-speaking countries 1996–2014 Open PDF
(2020)
Thelwall, M.
Initiatives addressing the lack of women in many academic fields, and the general lack of senior women, need to be informed about the causes of any gender differences that may affect career progression, including citation impact. Previous research about gender differences in journal article citation impact has found the direction of any difference to vary by country and field, but has usually avoided discussions of the magnitude and wider significance of any differences and has not been systematic in terms of fields and/or time. This study investigates differences in citation impact between male and female first-authored research for 27 broad fields and six large English-speaking countries (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the USA) from 1996 to 2014. The results show an overall female first author citation advantage, although in most broad fields it is reversed in all countries for some years. International differences include Medicine having a female first author citation advantage for all years in Australia, but a male citation advantage for most years in Canada. There was no general trend for the gender difference to increase or decrease over time. The average effect size is small, however, and unlikely to have a substantial influence on overall gender differences in researcher careers. © 2020 Mike Thelwall. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.
Gender inequity in speaking opportunities at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting Open PDF
(Nature Publishing Group, 2018)
Ford, Heather L.
;
Brick, Cameron
;
Blaufuss, Karine
;
Dekens, Petra S.
Implicit and explicit biases impede the participation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematic (STEM) fields. Across career stages, attending conferences and presenting research are ways to spread scientific results, find job opportunities, and gain awards. Here, we present an analysis by gender of the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting speaking opportunities from 2014 to 2016. We find that women were invited and assigned oral presentations less often than men. However, when we control for career stage, we see similar rates between women and men and women sometimes outperform men. At the same time, women elect for poster presentations more than men. Male primary conveners allocate invited abstracts and oral presentations to women less often and below the proportion of women authors. These results highlight the need to provide equal opportunity to women in speaking roles at scientific conferences as part of the overall effort to advance women in STEM.
A gender bias habit-breaking intervention led to increased hiring of female faculty in STEMM departments Open PDF
(Academic Press Inc., 2017)
Devine, P.G.
;
Forscher, P.S.
;
Cox, W.T.L.
;
Kaatz, A.
;
Sheridan, J.
Addressing the underrepresentation of women in science is a top priority for many institutions, but the majority of efforts to increase representation of women are neither evidence-based nor rigorously assessed. One exception is the gender bias habit-breaking intervention (Carnes et al., 2015), which, in a cluster-randomized trial involving all but two departmental clusters (N = 92) in the 6 STEMM focused schools/colleges at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, led to increases in gender bias awareness and self-efficacy to promote gender equity in academic science departments and perceptions of a more positive departmental climate. Following this initial success, the present study compares, in a preregistered analysis, hiring rates of new female faculty pre- and post-manipulation. Whereas the proportion of women hired by control departments remained stable over time, the proportion of women hired by intervention departments increased by an estimated 18 percentage points (OR = 2.23, dOR = 0.34). Though the preregistered analysis did not achieve conventional levels of statistical significance (p < 0.07), the study has a hard upper limit on statistical power, as the cluster-randomized trial has a maximum sample size of 92 departmental clusters. These findings, however, have undeniable practical significance for the advancement of women in science, and provide promising evidence that psychological interventions can facilitate gender equity and diversity. © 2017 Elsevier Inc.
A push for inclusive data collection in STEM organizations Open PDF
(American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2022)
Burnett, Nicholas P.
;
Hernandez, Alyssa M.
;
King, Emily E.
;
Tanner, Richelle L.
;
Wilsterman, Kathryn
Professional organizations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are well-positioned to improve the recruitment and retention (R&R) of underrepresented groups (1, 2) by providing targeted professional development, networking opportunities, and political advocacy (3, 4). Tailoring these initiatives to specific underrepresented groups can enhance their impact (5), but this is predicated on organizations knowing their demographic make-up (6). Here, we report patterns in STEM organizations’ collection and usage of demographic data from members and conference attendees, based on information from 73 professional societies representing 712,000 constituents. In light of inconsistencies and limitations that we observed, we suggest survey programs that can serve as models for inclusive survey designs by organizations and, where possible, provide demographic information for benchmarking relative to the general population. With improved surveys, organizations can leverage demographic data to prioritize and evaluate R&R efforts, and share effective strategies for R&R of underrepresented groups across STEM. Baseline demographic data, when compared to the general population (across STEM or across a country), can help organizations set and prioritize R&R goals and, when monitored over time, help organizations evaluate the effectiveness of R&R efforts. Government agencies often provide the most relevant demographic data for a general population in STEM (e.g., the US National Science Foundation) and in a country (e.g., the US Census Bureau) because of their surveys’ large sample sizes and broad distributions. As a result, organizations may be compelled to use government surveys as a model for demographic survey design and for benchmarking (i.e., comparing their organization’s demographic diversity to the general population). Although these agencies survey many categories of demographic information (e.g., gender identity, family status, citizenship, abilities, race and ethnicity), they do not necessarily collect all the demographic information that is considered meaningful to describe the STEM community—i.e., treating some groups as homogeneous (7) and ignoring other groups completely (8). By contrast, inclusive demographic surveys acknowledge the full diversity of identities that are meaningful among members of the STEM community. Thus, organizations seeking to describe their demographic composition are pressured to choose between following the examples of government agencies versus creating new, inclusive surveys to recognize additional (and evolving) identities within the STEM community.

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