PUBBLICAZIONE/PUBLICATION

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  • Item type:Publication,
    Women in Science. Experiences of Academics in Switzerland
    (Transcript, 2025-08-12)
    De Cia Annalisa
    ;
    Hellmüller, Sara
    ;
    Mesok Khan, Elizabeth
    Women in science face particular challenges, such as structural inequalities, highly competitive work environments, and at times toxic cultures. This collection conveys the experiences of women academics in Switzerland, featuring insights from twelve scholars across various universities and disciplines. Each contributor shares their unique journey in pursuit of a professorship, illustrating the rich diversity of the Swiss scientific community. This volume offers hope for those struggling with finding their place in science, emphasizing the joys and privileges that can be found in an academic career and the passion and perseverance of those pursuing it.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Historical comparison of gender inequality in scientific careers across countries and disciplines Open PDF 
    (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020)
    Huang, Junming
    ;
    Gates, Alexander J.
    ;
    Sinatra, Roberta
    ;
    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.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Participation of women in doctorate, research, innovation, and management activities at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid: analysis of the decade 2006–2016 Open PDF 
    (2019)
    Hernández-Martín, E.
    ;
    Calle, F.
    ;
    Dueñas, J.C.
    ;
    Holgado, M.
    ;
    Gómez-Pérez, A.
    This article studies the participation of women in doctorate, lecturing and research, innovation, and management activities at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), the most important and largest university in Spain devoted to engineering and architecture. The analyses revealed significant differences in the ratio of male (76%) and female (24%) lecturing and research staff. This unequal ratio conducted to women underrepresentation in other actions such as coordination of international projects, decision-making designations, patenting and software licensing, collaboration with companies, and PhD supervision. PhD enrolment and PhD defence data, disaggregated by gender and by technological area, were also analysed as they are the starting point of the academic career, and showed a widespread male prevalence over women (ca. 70% men vs. 30% women). The aim of this paper is to present actual, accurate, objective, and gender-segregated information extracted from UPM databases, to carry out a qualitative study drawing on an opinion survey and a “gap” analysis, and to undertake a critical examination of the historic, political, sociocultural and personal factors affecting gender inequalities in academia. Policy recommendations to improve the situation of women and to achieve gender balance in the disciplines of engineering and architecture are also provided. © 2019, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Equity for excellence in academic institutions: a manifesto for change Open PDF 
    (2021)
    Wedekind, Lauren
    ;
    Noé, Andrés
    ;
    Mokaya, Jolynne
    ;
    Tamandjou, Cynthia
    ;
    Kapulu, Melissa
    Higher academic institutions in the UK need to drive improvements in equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) through sustainable practical interventions. A broad view of inclusivity is based on an intersectional approach that considers race, geographical location, caring responsibilities, disability, neurodiversity, religion, and LGBTQIA+ identities. We describe the establishment of a diverse stakeholder group to develop practical grass-roots recommendations through which improvements can be advanced. We have developed a manifesto for change, comprising six domains through which academic institutions can drive progress through setting short, medium, and long-term priorities. Interventions will yield rewards in recruitment and retention of a diverse talent pool, leading to enhanced impact and output.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Mid-career field switches reduce gender disparities in academic publishing Open PDF 
    (2020)
    Thelwall, M.
    The continuing low proportions of women in most STEM fields in many countries is an ongoing concern, with no agreement about the fundamental causes or effective remedial actions. One previous study has found that professional women are more likely to switch from a (not necessarily academic) STEM career than professional women in comparable non-STEM jobs, reducing the overall numbers of STEM women. This study investigates whether the same is true for long term academics, and hence could partly account for current gender disparities. Based on the Scopus subject categories of the first and last five publications 2001–2018 of people in 31 countries with publishing careers starting after 2000, female researchers switching fields mid-career tend to move to fields with fewer women, relative to men switching fields mid-career. Thus, mid-career field changes within academia do not help to explain continuing gender disparities in publishing and other explanations must be sought. © 2020, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Gender differences in research areas, methods and topics: Can people and thing orientations explain the results? Open PDF 
    (2019)
    Thelwall, M.
    ;
    Bailey, C.
    ;
    Tobin, C.
    ;
    Bradshaw, N.-A.
    Although the gender gap in academia has narrowed, females are underrepresented within some fields in the USA. Prior research suggests that the imbalances between science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields may be partly due to greater male interest in things and greater female interest in people, or to off-putting masculine cultures in some disciplines. To seek more detailed insights across all subjects, this article compares practising US male and female researchers between and within 285 narrow Scopus fields inside 26 broad fields from their first-authored articles published in 2017. The comparison is based on publishing fields and the words used in article titles, abstracts, and keywords. The results cannot be fully explained by the people/thing dimensions. Exceptions include greater female interest in veterinary science and cell biology and greater male interest in abstraction, patients, and power/control fields, such as politics and law. These may be due to other factors, such as the ability of a career to provide status or social impact or the availability of alternative careers. As a possible side effect of the partial people/thing relationship, females are more likely to use exploratory and qualitative methods and males are more likely to use quantitative methods. The results suggest that the necessary steps of eliminating explicit and implicit gender bias in academia are insufficient and might be complemented by measures to make fields more attractive to minority genders. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Does Gender Bias Still Affect Women in Science? Open PDF 
    (2019)
    Roper, Rachel L.
    The percentage of women employed in professional scientific positions has been low but is increasing over time. The U.S. National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have both implemented programs to improve women's participation in science, and many universities and companies have diversity and equity programs. While most faculty and scientists believe that they are fair and unbiased, numerous well-designed studies published in leading peer-reviewed journals show that gender bias in sciences and medicine is widespread and persistent today in both faculty and students. Recent studies show that gender bias affects student grading, professional hiring, mentoring, tenure, promotion, respect, grant proposal success, and pay. In addition, sexual harassment remains a significant barrier. Fortunately, several studies provide evidence that programs that raise conscious awareness of gender bias can improve equity in science, and there are a number of recommendations and strategies for improving the participation of women.
  • Item type:Publication,
    A Model for Bridging the Gender Gap in STEM in Higher Education Institutions
    (Springer Nature, 2022)
    García-Holgado, Alicia
    ;
    García-Peñalvo, Francisco José
    ;
    García-Peñalvo, Francisco José
    ;
    García-Holgado, Alicia
    ;
    Dominguez, Angeles
    Women present a historic and worrying gap in science and technology-related disciplines, generally knowns as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), except in the case of health professions. A holistic approach is needed to support policymakers worldwide in bridging the gender gap in STEM, in which higher education institutions have a crucial role. Promoting this active implication of the universities in this problem, in the European project Building the future of Latin America: engaging women into STEM (W-STEM), a model to modernise the government, management and operation of higher education institutions in Latin America to improve attraction, access to and retention of women in STEM programs has been developed. This situation is not exclusive to Latin American countries, it is a global problem, so the results of the W-STEM project are also applicable to European partners and transferrable worldwide. The main goal of this chapter is to describe the W-STEM model based on three years of working on strategies and mechanisms to improve the attraction, access, guidance, and retention processes to engage more women in STEM programs. The model has been thoroughly tested in eleven institutions in Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Mexico, involving public and private institutions with different gender equality situations.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Explaining Course Enrollment Gaps in High School: Examination of Gender-Imbalance in the Applied Sciences Open PDF 
    (2023)
    Freeman, JA
    ;
    Gottfried, MA
    ;
    Odle, TK
    Federal policy in the United States has urged high schools to expand offerings in career and technical education (CTE) coursework to address persistent gender inequities in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medical (STEMM) fields. Unfortunately, gender composition in engineering and health sciences CTE enrollment is highly imbalanced and reflects postsecondary and labor market trends. Using data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, we use decomposition techniques to examine which student, family, and school factors explain gender-imbalanced enrollment in STEMM-focused CTE courses. The results indicate student occupational expectations were the largest contributor to gender gaps across content areas.