Communications of the ACM
Gender Parity in Science 'Generations Away'
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Gender parity in science remains a distant goal, with men set to outnumber women in publishing in many fields until at least the end of the century.
An analysis of more than 10 million research papers in 6,000 journals has revealed a persistent dominance of male writers, with men in particular monopolizing the senior author credits in big-name journals.
The study found that the imbalance was most pronounced in some of the wealthiest countries, with "strikingly few" female authors in Japan, Germany, and Switzerland. It was worst in surgery, computer science, mathematics, and especially physics, where—on current rates of progress—numbers would remain skewed for another 258 years.
"Despite recent progress, the gender gap appears likely to persist for generations," the team reports in "The Gender Gap in Science: How Long Until Women Are Equally Represented?," published in the journal PLOS Biology. "The gender gap will not close without further reforms in education, mentoring, and academic publishing."
From Times Higher Education
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