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Monitoring the gender gap in the coverage of biology professors on Wikipedia Open PDF
(The Royal Society, 2026-05-27)
Alvarez-Ponce, David
;
Iyengar, Niveda
Women are under-represented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, especially in senior positions. One known reason is the limited visibility of female scientists, which discourages young women from entering STEM fields, thus perpetuating the gender gap. A number of studies have shown that women, including those in academia, are less likely to have a Wikipedia biography than their male counterparts, and that, when they have a biography, it tends to be underdeveloped. Since Wikipedia informs a large portion of society on a daily basis-especially young people-who is covered on the platform, and who is excluded from it, matters. Therefore, a number of projects have been created to increase women's coverage on Wikipedia. Using a recently generated census of 2104 female and 3721 male tenured and tenure-eligible faculty members affiliated with the biology departments of all United States R1 universities, we examined the extent to which biology faculty are covered on Wikipedia. Women in the census were significantly less likely to be featured on the platform than their male peers until 2018. However, the trend reversed in 2022, and women were 25% more likely than men to have a Wikipedia biography in 2024. In addition, women's biographies tend to be longer than those of men. Our results highlight the importance and effectiveness of projects aimed at improving women's coverage on Wikipedia.
The impact of gender diversity on scientific research teams: a need to broaden and accelerate future research Open PDF
(Palgrave, 2022)
Love, Hannah B.
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Stephens, Alyssa
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Fosdick, Bailey K.
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Tofany, Elizabeth
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Fisher, Ellen R.
Multiple studies from the literature suggest that a high proportion of women on scientific teams contributes to successful team collaboration, but how the proportion of women impacts team success and why this is the case, is not well understood. One perspective suggests that having a high proportion of women matters because women tend to have greater social sensitivity and promote even turn-taking in meetings. Other studies have found women are more likely to collaborate and are more democratic. Both explanations suggest that women team members fundamentally change team functioning through the way they interact. Yet, most previous studies of gender on scientific teams have relied heavily on bibliometric data, which focuses on the prevalence of women team members rather than how they act and interact throughout the scientific process. In this study, we explore gender diversity in scientific teams using various types of relational data to investigate how women impact team interactions. This study focuses on 12 interdisciplinary university scientific teams that were part of an institutional team science program from 2015 to 2020 aimed at cultivating, integrating, and translating scientific expertise. The program included multiple forms of evaluation, including participant observation, focus groups, interviews, and surveys at multiple time points. Using social network analysis, this article tested five hypotheses about the role of women on university-based scientific teams. The hypotheses were based on three premises previously established in the literature. Our analyses revealed that only one of the five hypotheses regarding gender roles on teams was supported by our data. These findings suggest that scientific teams may create ingroups, when an underrepresented identity is included instead of excluded in the outgroup, for women in academia. This finding does not align with the current paradigm and the research on the impact of gender diversity on teams. Future research to determine if high-functioning scientific teams disrupt rather than reproduce existing hierarchies and gendered patterns of interactions could create an opportunity to accelerate the advancement of knowledge while promoting a just and equitable culture and profession.
Gender bias in academia: A lifetime problem that needs solutions Open PDF
(2021)
Llorens, Anaïs
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Tzovara, Athina
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Bellier, Ludovic
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Bhaya-Grossman, Ilina
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Bidet-Caulet, Aurélie
Despite increased awareness of the lack of gender equity in academia and a growing number of initiatives to address issues of diversity, change is slow, and inequalities remain. A major source of inequity is gender bias, which has a substantial negative impact on the careers, work-life balance, and mental health of underrepresented groups in science. Here, we argue that gender bias is not a single problem but manifests as a collection of distinct issues that impact researchers’ lives. We disentangle these facets and propose concrete solutions that can be adopted by individuals, academic institutions, and society.
Academic Productivity Differences by Gender and Child Age in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine Faculty During the COVID-19 Pandemic Open PDF
(2021)
Krukowski, Rebecca A.
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Jagsi, Reshma
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Cardel, Michelle I.
Background: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most faculty in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) began working from home, including many who were simultaneously caring for children. The objective was to assess associations of gender and parental status with self-reported academic productivity before (i.e., mid-January to mid-March 2020) and during the pandemic (i.e., mid-March to mid-May 2020). Materials and Methods: STEMM faculty in the United States (N = 284, 67.6% women, 57.0% with children younger than the age of 18 years living at home) completed a survey about the number of hours worked and the frequency of academic productivity activities. Results: There was no significant difference in the hours worked per week by gender (men, M [standard deviation, SD] = 45.8 [16.7], women = 43.1 [16.3]). Faculty with 0-5-year-old children reported significantly fewer work hours (33.7 [13.9]) compared to all other groups (No children = 49.2 [14.9], 6-11 years old = 48.3 [13.9], and 12-17 years old = 49.5 [13.9], p < 0.0001). Women's self-reported first/corresponding author's and coauthor's article submissions decreased significantly between the two time periods; men's productivity metrics did not change. Faculty with 0-5-year-old children completed significantly fewer peer review assignments, attended fewer funding panel meetings, and submitted fewer first authors' articles during the pandemic compared to the previous period. Those with children aged 6 years or older at home or without children at home reported significant increases or stable productivity. Conclusions: Overall, significant disparities were observed in academic productivity by gender and child age during the pandemic and if confirmed by further research, should be considered by academic institutions and funding agencies when making decisions regarding funding and hiring as well as promotion and tenure.
Intersectional inequalities in science Open PDF
(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022)
Kozlowski, Diego
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Larivière, Vincent
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Sugimoto, Cassidy R.
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Monroe-White, Thema
The US scientific workforce is primarily composed of White men. Studies have demonstrated the systemic barriers preventing women and other minoritized populations from gaining entry to science; few, however, have taken an intersectional perspective and examined the consequences of these inequalities on scientific knowledge. We provide a large-scale bibliometric analysis of the relationship between intersectional identities, topics, and scientific impact. We find homophily between identities and topic, suggesting a relationship between diversity in the scientific workforce and expansion of the knowledge base. However, topic selection comes at a cost to minoritized individuals for whom we observe both between- and within-topic citation disadvantages. To enhance the robustness of science, research organizations should provide adequate resources to historically underfunded research areas while simultaneously providing access for minoritized individuals into high-prestige networks and topics.
Historical comparison of gender inequality in scientific careers across countries and disciplines Open PDF
(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020)
Huang, Junming
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Gates, Alexander J.
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Sinatra, Roberta
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Barabási, Albert-László
There is extensive, yet fragmented, evidence of gender differences in academia suggesting that women are underrepresented in most scientific disciplines and publish fewer articles throughout a career, and their work acquires fewer citations. Here, we offer a comprehensive picture of longitudinal gender differences in performance through a bibliometric analysis of academic publishing careers by reconstructing the complete publication history of over 1.5 million gender-identified authors whose publishing career ended between 1955 and 2010, covering 83 countries and 13 disciplines. We find that, paradoxically, the increase of participation of women in science over the past 60 years was accompanied by an increase of gender differences in both productivity and impact. Most surprisingly, though, we uncover two gender invariants, finding that men and women publish at a comparable annual rate and have equivalent career-wise impact for the same size body of work. Finally, we demonstrate that differences in publishing career lengths and dropout rates explain a large portion of the reported career-wise differences in productivity and impact, although productivity differences still remain. This comprehensive picture of gender inequality in academia can help rephrase the conversation around the sustainability of women’s careers in academia, with important consequences for institutions and policy makers.
Greater female first author citation advantages do not associate with reduced or reducing gender disparities in academia Open PDF
(2020)
Thelwall, M.
;
Sud, P.
Ongoing problems attracting women into many Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects have many potential explanations. This article investigates whether the possible undercitation of women associates with lower proportions of, or increases in, women in a subject. It uses six million articles published in 1996–2012 across up to 331 fields in six mainly English-speaking countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. The proportion of female first-and last-authored articles in each year was calculated and 4,968 regressions were run to detect first-author gender advantages in field normalized article citations. The proportion of female first authors in each field correlated highly between countries and the female first-author citation advantages derived from the regressions correlated moderately to strongly between countries, so both are relatively field specific. There was a weak tendency in the United States and New Zealand for female citation advantages to be stronger in fields with fewer women, after excluding small fields, but there was no other association evidence. There was no evidence of female citation advantages or disadvantages to be a cause or effect of changes in the proportions of women in a field for any country. Inappropriate uses of career-level citations are a likelier source of gender inequities. © 2020 Mike Thelwall and Pardeep Sud. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.
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.
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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.

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