Gender Representation on Journal Editorial Boards in the Mathematical Sciences
Publication type
journal article
Publication date
2016
Author(s)
Topaz, Chad M.
Sen, Shilad
Publisher
Public Library of Science
Language
English
Discipline(s)
Geographical area
Abstract
We study gender representation on the editorial boards of 435 journals in the mathematical sciences. Women are known to comprise approximately 15% of tenure-stream faculty positions in doctoral-granting mathematical sciences departments in the United States. Compared to this group, we find that 8.9% of the 13067 editorships in our study are held by women. We describe group variations within the editorships by identifying specific journals, subfields, publishers, and countries that significantly exceed or fall short of this average. To enable our study, we develop a semi-automated method for inferring gender that has an estimated accuracy of 97.5%. Our findings provide the first measure of gender distribution on editorial boards in the mathematical sciences, offer insights that suggest future studies in the mathematical sciences, and introduce new methods that enable large-scale studies of gender distribution in other fields.
Journal
PLOS ONE
ISSN
1932-6203
Volume
11
Issue
8
Pagination
e0161357