The role of gender in scholarly authorship

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 8; no. 7; p. e66212
• Main Authors: West, Jevin D, Jacquet, Jennifer, King, Molly M, Correll, Shelley J, Bergstrom, Carl T
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 22-07-2013; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• 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; United States > US; California
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0066212

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.