Equality

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Title : 

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


Authors

Mike Thelwall
University of Wolverhampton

Amalia Mas-Bleda
University of Wolverhampton


source : click here

    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 Scopusindexed articles 2014-18. The results show overall and geocultural patterns as well as individual national differences. Almost half of the subjects were always more male (7; e.g., Mathematics) or always more female (6; 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 USA-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. Keywords: Gender; Academic publishing; International differences; Field differences. 

INTRODUCTION.

    The proportion of female researchers varies between fields. In Europe, for example, women are more likely to be found in medical and social sciences, whereas men are more likely to be in engineering, technology and the natural sciences (European Commission, 2019; Leta & Lewison, 2003). There is also evidence of differences between countries in the proportions of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and other areas from many different sources, at different educational levels and for careers (European Commission, 2019; Larivière, Ni, Gingras, Cronin, & Sugimoto, 2013; Mastekaasa & Smeby, 2008; Riegle-Crumb, King, Grodsky, & Muller, 2012; Sadler, Sonnert, Hazari, & Tai, 2012; Tellhed, Bäckström, & Björklund, 2017; Vincent-Lancrin, 2008), despite a lack of biological sex differences in capability (e.g., Hyde & Mertz, 2009). 

    An international comparison of the proportions of women in science and engineering careers in Europe found substantial differences, with female majorities in Lithuania, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Portugal, in comparison to only 25% in Hungary (Eurostat, 2019), suggesting that STEM gender effects vary substantially between countries, even within the relatively economically homogeneous continent of Europe. An international comparison of academic authorship has also found substantial differences between countries in the proportion of female first-authored research, including within disciplines (Elsevier, 2017). The proportion of female first-authors may not be the same as the proportion of active female researchers, however measured (e.g., full-time equivalent, with teaching allowance, including support staff). The shortage of female researchers in STEM subjects is a cause for national concern in many countries, leading to initiatives like GENDERNET in Europe (Puy Rodríguez & Pascual Pérez, 2015), ADVANCE in the USA and Athena SWAN in the UK (Rosser, Barnard, Carnes, & Munir, 2019) to redress the imbalance. Outside academia, there are also high profile national (e.g., Latimer, Cerise, Ovseiko, Rathborne, Billiards, & El-Adhami, 2019) and international (UNESCO, 2019) initiatives to encourage women to choose scientific careers. All these need to understand the fundamental causes of gender disparities to succeed. 

    A century ago it was widely believed that women were incapable of benefitting from an academic education and they were barred or strongly discouraged from attending universities. Today, there are many possible explanations for the continuing minority of women studying science or working as scientists (Blickenstaff, 2005; Glass, Sassler, Levitte, & Michelmore, 2013; Hill, Corbett, & Rose, 2010) or working in male-dominated occupations (Frome, Alfeld, Eccles, & Barber, 2006), with no single reason accepted as the primary cause. Since sexism pervades society, it would be reasonable to believe that continuing gender disparities in STEM subjects in academia are primarily due to gender-science stereotypes (Miller, Eagly, & Linn, 2015; Smyth & Nosek, 2015), conscious or subconscious sexism (e.g., Moss-Racusin, Dovidio, Brescoll, Graham, & Handelsman, 2012; Robnett, 2016; Rubini & Menegatti, 2014; Savigny, 2014) or implicit gender discrimination, such as not considering carer responsibilities (Phillips, Tannan, & Kalliainen, 2016; Roos & Gatta, 2009). In contrast, some argue that discrimination cannot explain current STEM disparities in academia and propose that the main current causes of current disparities are gender differences in personal choice (whether socially constrained or not) due to childhood influences (Ceci, Ginther, Kahn, & Williams, 2014; Ceci & Williams, 2011; Williams, & Ceci, 2015). For example, girls and women in the USA seem to be socialised to have communal career goals and might therefore prefer directly helpful academic subjects, whereas boys and men are more likely to have agentic self-advancement career goals and might prefer subjects offering more status (Diekman, Steinberg, Brown, Belanger, & Clark, 2017). 

    From an international perspective, there is a gender equality paradox in education that mitigates against the hypothesis that ongoing sexism is the primary cause of current STEM gender disparities: more gender-equal countries have larger gender disparities between degree subject choices (Stoet & Geary, 2018), as also found for international MOOC enrolments (Jiang, Schenke, Eccles, Xu, & Warschauer, 2018). This evidence supports (socially constrained) choice rather than discrimination as the most direct determinant of STEM gender disparities. Whilst choices are constrained by social, cultural and economic factors, greater gender specialisation in conditions of more free choice could occur, for example, for economic or other factors increasing overall gender equality but creating or exacerbating some aspects of gender difference (e.g., through more powerful gendered marketing). In support of this, women in STEM subjects in the USA seem to pay a feminine personality trait penalty for participation (Simon, Wagner, & Killion, 2017). It is not known whether the gender equality paradox applies after degree-level studies.  






Resume :

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 2014-18. The results show overall and geocultural patterns as well as individual national differences. Almost half of the subjects were always more male (7; e.g., Mathematics) or always more female (6; 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 USA-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. 



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