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  • Item type:Publication,
    Advancing gender equality through the Athena SWAN Charter for Women in Science: An exploratory study of women's and men's perceptions Open PDF 
    (BioMed Central Ltd., 2017)
    Ovseiko, P.V.
    ;
    Chapple, A.
    ;
    Edmunds, L.D.
    ;
    Ziebland, S.
    Background: While in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia, higher education and research institutions are widely engaged with the Athena SWAN Charter for Women in Science to advance gender equality, empirical research on this process and its impact is rare. This study combined two data sets (free- text comments from a survey and qualitative interviews) to explore the range of experiences and perceptions of participation in Athena SWAN in medical science departments of a research-intensive university in Oxford, United Kingdom. Methods: The study is based on the secondary analysis of data from two projects: 59 respondents to an anonymous online survey (42 women, 17 men) provided relevant free-text comments and, separately, 37 women participated in face-to-face narrative interviews. Free-text survey comments and narrative interviews were analysed thematically using constant comparison. Results: Both women and men said that participation in Athena SWAN had brought about important structural and cultural changes, including increased support for women's careers, greater appreciation of caring responsibilities, and efforts to challenge discrimination and bias. Many said that these positive changes would not have happened without linkage of Athena SWAN to government research funding, while others thought there were unintended consequences. Concerns about the programme design and implementation included a perception that Athena SWAN has limited ability to address longstanding and entrenched power and pay imbalances, persisting lack of work-life balance in academic medicine, questions about the sustainability of positive changes, belief that achieving the award could become an end in itself, resentment about perceived positive discrimination, and perceptions that further structural and cultural changes were needed in the university and wider society. Conclusions: The findings from this study suggest that Athena SWAN has a positive impact in advancing gender equality, but there may be limits to how much it can improve gender equality without wider institutional and societal changes. To address the fundamental causes of gender inequality would require cultural change and welfare state policies incentivising men to increase their participation in unpaid work in the family, which is beyond the scope of higher education and research policy. © 2017 The Author(s).
  • Item type:Publication,
    A Snapshot of Female Representation in Twelve Academic Psychiatry Institutions Around the World Open PDF 
    (2022)
    Kenney, Joanne
    ;
    Ochoa, Susanna
    ;
    Alnor, Mohamed Abdalhameed
    ;
    Ben-Azu, Benneth
    ;
    Diaz-Cutraro, Luciana
    The study presented here aims at bringing a global perspective to the phenomenon of unequal representation of females in science by offering empirical data of female representation in neuroscience/schizophrenia academic or clinical departments in several institutions around the world. We took advantage of a budding network of scientists and colleagues from different countries to bring the data together. The data presented are related to sex, that is the biological distinction between males and females, based on genetics and reproductive anatomy, while gender, considered a cultural concept was harder to determine. We report data from two clinical/academic departments in Nigeria, Africa; 2 clinical/academic departments from Sudan, Africa; 1 clinical/academic department from South Africa, Africa; 3 academic institutions from Ireland, Europe; 1 clinical/academic institution from Spain, Europe; 2 academic institutions from Buenos Aires University, Argentina; and the Psychiatry Departments at Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Eliminating Gender Inequality in Engineering, Industry, and Academia
    (2019)
    Grimson, J.
    ;
    Grimson, W.
    ;
    Christensen, S.H., Delahousse, B., Didier, C., Meganck, M., Murphy, M.
    Gender equality in the workplace with its many facets is a current topic of great interest in many societies and across virtually all sectors. Women are seriously under-represented in senior positions within organizations and there is evidence of a continuing pay gap between women and men. Industry, commerce, business, law, medicine, engineering, academia all have responded to or are responding to the challenges of eliminating gender inequality. There are three specific reasons for this. The first is based on the principle that there is or should be a prevailing environment guaranteeing social justice and human rights for all. The second is in effect a question of parsimony by which talent should not be wasted. Finally, and the imperative for the elimination of gender inequality which is receiving the most attention today, is that of diversity. The diversity argument adds to the ‘not being wasteful’ by virtue of the range of different skills, perspectives and experiences that are brought to bear on whatever challenge is being faced. Tackling gender equality is a complex task requiring many interventions but what is clear is that there is broad agreement across the different sectors, including engineering, as to what is required. The key interventions include committed and determined leadership from the top of the organization over a sustained period of time, supports to ensure better work-life balance, developing future women leaders, and tackling unconscious bias. The evidence is unequivocal – gender balance will not be achieved automatically without a range of such interventions and failure to take action will have a major impact on the engineering profession’s ability to meet the needs of society today and tomorrow. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
  • Item type:Publication,
    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.
  • Item type:Publication,
    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.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Women's Authorship of Reviews in Ophthalmic Journals over Time Open PDF 
    (2021)
    Gertig, D.
    ;
    Keane, M.C.
    ;
    Matthews, J.M.
    ;
    Williams, K.A.
    ;
    Smith, J.R.
    Purpose:To investigate prevalence and trends in women's authorship of articles in ophthalmic review journals over 2 decades.Design:Literature survey.Methods:Total number of authors, and number and gender of first and senior (last-named) authors, were identified in all full reviews published in Prog Retin Eye Res, Surv Ophthalmol, and Curr Opin Ophthalmol for the calendar years 1999, 2009, and 2019. The gender of authors was assigned manually by multiple methods. The subspecialty area of each review was captured by keyword and text search. Country of origin was determined from attributions of first and senior authors.Results:The gender of 841 first and senior authors was assigned unequivocally for 471 articles (96%). The frequency of women's authorship rose significantly over time (1999, 2009, 2019) for both first authors (19%, 32%, 44%; P < 0.001) and senior authors (16%, 19%, 29%; P = 0.018). The number of single-author reviews decreased significantly over time (P < 0.001), as did the proportion of reviews with neither a first nor a senior woman author (P < 0.001). Women's first authorship increased over time for reviews on glaucoma (P < 0.001), while women's senior authorship increased for anterior segment/cataract (P = 0.036). The proportion of reviews with a woman first or senior author did not differ by country of origin (P = 0.887 and P = 0.520, respectively).Conclusions:Women's authorship of articles in ophthalmic review journals increased significantly over the 20-year period, but a gender disparity remained: in 2019, more than 55% of first authors, and more than 70% of senior authors, were men. © 2021 Asia-Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology. All rights reserved.
  • Item type:Publication,
    A Review of Irish National Strategy for Gender Equality in Higher Education 2010–2021
    (Springer, 2022)
    Dunne, J.
    ;
    O’Reilly, A.
    ;
    O’Donoghue, A.
    ;
    Kinahan, M.
    ;
    García-Peñalvo, F.J., García-Holgado, A., Dominguez, A., Pascual, J.
    This chapter provides a narrative of the key policies, initiatives and actions that have transformed both the landscape of gender equality in Higher Education in Ireland, and the role of gender equality in research policy and public engagement in STEM over the last decade. It aims to provide leaders committed to gender equality with examples of good practice within the EU-Irish context. The first part of the chapter focuses on the EU gender equality strategies for Higher Education. It explains the review of gender equality undertaken by the Irish Higher Education Authority (HEA), the significant findings, and the National Gender Action Plan designed to address the issues identified. It contains examples of high-level initiatives implemented to deliver on key actions. These include centres of excellence for Gender Equality, and affirmative actions taken to address imbalance at senior levels in the Irish Higher Education system. It also provides an account of Irish participation in the UK Advance Higher Education (Advance HE) gender supports including the women’s leadership programme ‘Aurora’, and the ‘Athena SWAN’ charter that provides an accreditation framework for auditing, supporting and transforming gender equality in Higher Education Institutions. For context, some examples of implementing these in an Irish Institution are provided. The chapter then reviews the gender equality strategies and policies of the main research funding organisations in Ireland, namely Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), and the Irish Research Council (IRC). It indicates how gender equality manifests in achieving gender balance in the Irish research community; and in funding applications and consequently in research design to embed the gender element. It also provides an overview of recent national studies carried out to analyse the Irish public’s perceptions and awareness of STEM in society, and factors leading to career and study choices by young Irish people. It signposts to the recent actions to address gender equality provided under SFI’s remit for public engagement in STEM. © 2022, The Author(s).