Archives des mots-clés : gender

Gender differences in Dutch research funding over time: A statistical investigation of the innovation scheme 2012–2021

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Authors : Casper Albers, Sense Jan van der Molen, Thijs Bol

Background

In 2015, the Dutch research council, NWO, took measures to combat gender bias disadvantaging female applicants in a popular three-tiered funding scheme called the Talent Programme. The innovation scheme consists of three grants for different career stages, called Veni, Vidi and Vici.

Objectives

This paper studies the question whether or not NWO has been successful in removing gender differences in their funding procedure.

Methods

Using all available data from 2012 onwards of grant applications in the Talent Programme (16,249 applications of which 2,449 received funding), we study whether these measures had an effect using binomial generalized linear models.

Results

We find strong statistical evidence of a shift in gender effects in favour of female applicants in the first tier, the Veni (p < .001). Significant gender differences are not found in the two other tiers, the Vidi and Vici schemes.

Conclusions

In recent years, female applicants are more likely to be awarded with a Veni grant than male applicants and this gender gap has increased over time. This suggests that gender differences still exist in the assessment of Talent Programme submissions, albeit in a different direction than a decade ago.

URL : Gender differences in Dutch research funding over time: A statistical investigation of the innovation scheme 2012–2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297311

Associations between women’s retention in STEM or STEM-related fields and their spouses’ occupations and majors

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Author : Ao Shen

There is a growing awareness of the impact of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) or STEM-related fields and the influence of marriage on women’s retention in those fields.

This study examines the relationship between the continued employment of married women with STEM or STEM-related majors in relevant occupations and their spouses having the same field of occupation/major, as well as the difference in this association when considering the presence of children.

This study analyzed a sample comprising 147,467 married college-educated women aged 25–55 years. The analysis was restricted to women with a STEM or STEM-related major and a spouse who was college-educated and employed.

All the data were drawn from the 2015–2019 waves of data released by the American Community Survey (ACS). The results reveal that spousal occupational similarity is positively associated with married women’s retention in STEM and STEM-related (healthcare) occupations.

Moreover, the presence of children is a moderator variable in the relationship between women’s employment in STEM or STEM-related occupations and their spouses’ having STEM or STEM-related occupations. This study aims to provide information for research on spousal homogamy, women’s career development, and women with STEM or STEM-related majors and their families.

URL : Associations between women’s retention in STEM or STEM-related fields and their spouses’ occupations and majors

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02692-4

Gender differences in submission behavior exacerbate publication disparities in elite journals

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Authors : Isabel Basson, Chaoqun Ni, Giovanna Badia, Nathalie Tufenkji, Cassidy R. Sugimoto, Vincent Larivière

Women are particularly underrepresented in journals of the highest scientific impact, with substantial consequences for their careers. While a large body of research has focused on the outcome and the process of peer review, fewer articles have explicitly focused on gendered submission behavior and the explanations for these differences.

In our study of nearly five thousand active authors, we find that women are less likely to report having submitted papers and, when they have, to submit fewer manuscripts, on average, than men. Women were more likely to indicate that they did not submit their papers (in general and their subsequently most cited papers) to Science, Nature, or PNAS because they were advised not to.

In the aggregate, no statistically significant difference was observed between men and women in how they rated the quality of their work. Nevertheless, regardless of discipline, women were more likely than men to indicate that their “work was not ground-breaking or sufficiently novel” as a rationale for not submitting to one of the listed prestigious journals. Men were more likely than women to indicate that the “work would fit better in a more specialized journal.”

We discuss the implications of these findings and interventions that can serve to mitigate the disparities caused by gendered differences in submission behavior.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.08.21.554192

Gender diversity and publication activity—an analysis of STEM in the UK

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Authors : Yasaman Sarabi, Matthew Smith

Gender diversity in STEM remains a significant issue, as the field continues to be a male dominated one, despite increased attention on the subject. This article examines the interplay between gender diversity on projects funded by a major UK research council, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and the publication activity of a project, as measured by the average journal quality of project publication output, over a 10-year period.

The proportion of female representation and leadership on these projects remains very low. For the projects examined as part of this study, over 70% of these projects have no female representation, and less than 15% have a female lead.

This study does not find a significant relationship between gender diversity and journal quality output. This study highlights that an important avenue for future work is the development of alternative metrics to assess the performance of research projects in a discipline characterized by very low levels of gender diversity, to fully unpack the impact of project team gender diversity on project output activity.

URL : Gender diversity and publication activity—an analysis of STEM in the UK

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvad008

Gender-Related Differences in the Citation Impact of Scientific Publications and Improving the Authors’ Productivity

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Authors : Oleksandr Kuchanskyi, Yurii Andrashko, Andrii Biloshchytskyi, Serik Omirbayev, Aidos Mukhatayev, Svitlana Biloshchytska, Adil Faizullin

The article’s purpose is an analysis of the citation impact of scientific publications by authors of different gender compositions. The page method was chosen to calculate the citation impact of scientific publications, and the obtained results allowed to estimate the impact of the scientific publications based on the number of citations.

The normalized citation impact is calculated according to nine subsets of scientific publications that correspond to patterns of different gender compositions of authors. Also, these estimates were calculated for each country with which the authors of the publications are affiliated.

The Citation database, Network Dataset (Ver. 13), was chosen for the scientometric analysis. The dataset includes more than 5 million scientific publications and 48 million citations. Most of the publications in the dataset are from the STEM field. The results indicate that articles with a predominantly male composition are cited more than articles with a mixed or female composition of authors in this direction.

Analysis of advantages in dynamics indicates that in the last decade, in developed countries, there has been a decrease in the connection between the citation impact of scientific publications and the gender composition of their authors.

However, the obtained results still confirm the presence of gender inequality in science, which may be related to socioeconomic and cultural characteristics, natural homophily, and other factors that contribute to the appearance of gender gaps.

An essential consequence of overcoming these gaps, including in science, is ensuring the rights of people in all their diversity.

URL : Gender-Related Differences in the Citation Impact of Scientific Publications and Improving the Authors’ Productivity

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications11030037

Gender-based disparities and biases in science: An observational study of a virtual conference

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Authors : Junhanlu Zhang, Rachel Torchet, Hanna Julienne

Success in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) remains influenced by race, gender, and socioeconomic status. Here, we focus on the impact of gender on question-asking behavior during the 2021 JOBIM virtual conference (Journées Ouvertes en Biologie et Mathématiques).

We gathered quantitative and qualitative data including : demographic information, question asking motivations, live observations and interviews of participants. Quantitative analyses include unprecedented figures such as the fraction of the audience identifying as LGBTQIA+ and an increased attendance of women in virtual conferences.

Although parity was reached in the audience, women asked half as many questions as men. This under-representation persisted after accounting for seniority of the asker. Interviews of participants highlighted several barriers to oral expression encountered by women and gender minorities : negative reactions to their speech, discouragement to pursue a career in research, and gender discrimination/sexual harassment.

Informed by the study, guidelines for conference organizers have been written. The story behind the making of this study has been highlighted in a Nature Career article.

URL : Gender-based disparities and biases in science: An observational study of a virtual conference

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286811

Gender inequality and self-publication are common among academic editors

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Authors : Fengyuan Liu, Petter Holme, Matteo Chiesa, Bedoor AlShebli, Talal Rahwan

Scientific editors shape the content of academic journals and set standards for their fields. Yet, the degree to which the gender makeup of editors reflects that of scientists, and the rate at which editors publish in their own journals, are not entirely understood.

Here, we use algorithmic tools to infer the gender of 81,000 editors serving more than 1,000 journals and 15 disciplines over five decades. Only 26% of authors in our dataset are women, and we find even fewer women among editors (14%) and editors-in-chief (8%).

Career length explains the gender gap among editors, but not editors-in-chief. Moreover, by analysing the publication records of 20,000 editors, we find that 12% publish at least one-fifth, and 6% publish at least one-third, of their papers in the journal they edit.

Editors-in-chief tend to self-publish at a higher rate. Finally, compared with women, men have a higher increase in the rate at which they publish in a journal soon after becoming its editor.

URL : Gender inequality and self-publication are common among academic editors

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01498-1