Women face global disparity in scientific publishing

Women in science still have a long way to go in the fight for gender equality.

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It’s no secret that sex inequality still exists in science. Despite efforts to narrow the gap, disparities still exist in hiring, earnings, funding, and publishing. An analysis of over 5.4 million research papers, released this week in the journal Nature, confirms that women are significantly underrepresented in academic publishing worldwide.

The authors reviewed papers published between 2008 and 2012 that were indexed in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science database, analyzing them for the relationship between gender and research output, collaboration, and scientific impact. They found that globally, women account for fewer than 30 percent of authorships. The extent to which men dominate scientific production varies by region, with fewer than six percent of countries coming close to achieving parity.

South American and Eastern European countries exhibited the greatest gender balance, while the most male-dominated countries were largely in the Middle East. Only nine countries had a higher number of female authorships than male authorships, and only five of these countries produced more than 1,000 articles in the analysis. The US states and Canadian provinces that were closest to achieving parity have something in common with these countries: they have relatively little scientific output.