The role of gender in scholarly authorship

Gender disparities appear to be decreasing in academia according to a number of metrics, such as grant funding, hiring, acceptance at scholarly journals, and productivity, and it might be tempting to think that gender inequity will soon be a problem of the past. However, a large-scale analysis based...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2013-07, Vol.8 (7), p.e66212-e66212
Main Authors: West, Jevin D, Jacquet, Jennifer, King, Molly M, Correll, Shelley J, Bergstrom, Carl T
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Authoring
Authorship
Biology
Civil engineering
Collaboration
Datasets
Digital archives
Drug stores
Gender
Gender inequality
Hiring
Humans
Inspection
Medicine
Natural sciences
Productivity
Publications - statistics & numerical data
Science Policy
Sex Factors
Sexism - statistics & numerical data
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Social sciences
Social security
Sociology
Studies
Time Factors
Women
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Summary:Gender disparities appear to be decreasing in academia according to a number of metrics, such as grant funding, hiring, acceptance at scholarly journals, and productivity, and it might be tempting to think that gender inequity will soon be a problem of the past. However, a large-scale analysis based on over eight million papers across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities reveals a number of understated and persistent ways in which gender inequities remain. For instance, even where raw publication counts seem to be equal between genders, close inspection reveals that, in certain fields, men predominate in the prestigious first and last author positions. Moreover, women are significantly underrepresented as authors of single-authored papers. Academics should be aware of the subtle ways that gender disparities can occur in scholarly authorship.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0066212