Can lifestyle preferences help explain the persistent gender gap in academia? The "mothers work less" hypothesis supported for German but not for U.S. early career researchers

Gender Inequalities in Citations of Articles Published in High-Impact General Medical Journals: a Cross-Sectional Study

BACKGROUND

Besides the number of publications, the number of citations is another key metric often used to compare researchers with each other. While women researchers tend to have fewer publications than their men colleagues, the data is scarce for the number of citations. We aimed to determine whether there is a gender gap in citations.

METHODS

We used Web of Science to retrieve the number of citations per year for all research articles and reviews published between January 2015 and December 2019 in fourteen high-impact general medical journals (impact factor > 5). We used Gender API to identify the gender of the first/last authors. We compared the results by gender using multivariable negative binomial regressions (adjusting for intra-cluster correlations within journals).

RESULTS

The gender of the first/last author was determined for 13,218/13,350 (99%) and 11,894/12,026 (99%) articles, respectively. The proportion of women among first/last authors was 40% and 29%, respectively. The median number of citations per year was 5 (IQR = 11.3) for women and 6.8 (IQR = 17.8) for men for first authors (IRR = 1.5 [95% CI = 1.3-1.8], p value < 0.001), and 6 (IQR = 12.4) and 7.5 (IQR = 17.4) for last authors (IRR = 1.3 [95% CI = 1.2-1.5], p value < 0.001). Articles whose first and last authors were women were the least cited and those whose first and last authors were men were the most cited.

CONCLUSION

In this cross-sectional study, we found that articles authored by women were cited less often than those authored by men. Further studies are needed to explore the reasons for these gender differences in article citations.

Women's leadership in clinical research: A retrospective observational study over two decades in Spain

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

Available data support differences by gender in the leadership of clinical investigations (CI). This study analyzes to what extent women lead these investigations.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Observational-retrospective study in a tertiary university hospital associated with one of the most important health research institutes in Spain. We analyzed the principal investigators (PI) by gender from 2001 to 2020.

MAIN OUTCOME

proportion of CI led by female doctors (FD) during the study period.

SECONDARY OUTCOMES

differences in PI by gender according to the type of study: clinical trials (CT) or non-interventional-researches (NIR) and according to type of funding.

DATA SOURCES

Research Ethics Committee (REC) and Human Resources Department registries.

RESULTS

During the study, the REC approved 8466 protocols, 52% (4408/8466) were EC, the rest were NIR. Women led 39.7% (3360/8466) of the total. The gender gap was observed mainly in EC: FD were IP of 31.5% of them (1391/4408) and 48.5% (1969/4058) of NIR. This despite the increasing trend in the number of FD staff. By type of funding, when the studies were supported by private sector there was a wider gap markedly unfavorable for women.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results show that there is underrepresentation of women in research leadership, mainly those with private financing. This study reinforces the idea that there is still a long way to go in this field. More studies are necessary to identify the existing differences that allow the implementation of actions at the institutional and cultural level that promote gender equality in the field of clinical research.

The gender pay gap is smaller in occupations with a higher ratio of men: Evidence from a national panel study

Gender differences in career success are still an issue in society and research, and men typically earn higher incomes than women do. Building on previous theorizing and findings with the Theory of Gendered Organizations and the Theory of Tokenism, we used a large sample of the adult starting cohort in the German National Educational Panel Study and a multilevel approach to test how the interaction between gender and the gender ratio in occupations was associated with income. We wanted to know whether the male advantage in terms of income would be equal in magnitude across occupations (as suggested by the Theory of Gendered Organizations) or if it would vary with the gender ratio in occupations (as suggested by the Theory of Tokenism and reasoning regarding person-job fit), such that people benefit either (a) from resembling the majority of employees in a field by working in a gender-typical occupation or (b) from standing out by working in a gender-atypical occupation. Analyses supported the hypothesis that employees’ incomes may benefit if they belong to the gender minority in an occupation, but this finding applied only to women. By contrast, men did not benefit from working in a gender-atypical occupation. Thus, women earned less than men earned overall, but the gender pay gap was smaller in occupations with a higher ratio of male employees. The findings can advance the understanding of gender-related career decisions for both employers and employees.

Assessment of the share of women in the scientific and pedagogical staff: data from modern countries

Introduction. Currently, higher education is important in the training of highly qualified specialists, the creation of new knowledge, and the introduction of innovations. Objectives. The purpose of our study was to evaluate the indicators characterizing the gender structure of scientific and pedagogical personnel in higher educational institutions of various countries. These indicators were the share of female teachers in the total number of teachers of higher educational institutions. Methodology. We used data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics for 107 countries. We used the density functions of the normal distribution as models. Results. The results of the computational experiment showed that the share of female teaching staff in the number of scientific and pedagogical staff on average in the countries under consideration was 41.6%. Women make up more than half of the teaching staff in twenty-four countries. The predominance of men as teachers of higher education institutions was in seventy-eight countries. The countries with the maximum and minimum values of such indicators as the share of female teachers in the scientific and pedagogical staff were identified. A significant difference was proved for groups of countries with maximum and minimum values of indicators. Contribution. The proposed methodological approach and the results obtained have a scientific novelty, since the assessment of the territorial features of the gender structure of teachers of higher educational institutions has not previously been paid attention in scientific research.

Gender gap in research: a bibliometric study of published articles in primary health care and general internal medicine

BACKGROUND

Many studies examined gender inequalities in research, but only a few data are available for general biomedical journals. We assessed the prevalence of female first authorship in general biomedical journals and examined its variations across a number of author, article and journal characteristics.

METHODS

This study was nested within a larger project designed to analyze the bibliometric characteristics of scientific articles. We retrieved 767 randomly selected articles published in 2016 in high impact factor journals of primary healthcare (n = 9) and general internal medicine (n = 9). We extracted the following data: author (gender, number of publications and affiliation of the first author), paper (number of authors, number of participants and study design) and journal characteristics (journal discipline and 2015 impact factor). We compared the proportion of articles authored by women and men using univariate and multivariate logistic regressions adjusted for intra-cluster correlations.

RESULTS

The female authorship proportion was 48% (63% for primary healthcare and 33% for general internal medicine, P-value < 0.001). In multivariate analysis, women published fewer articles (<5 versus >15 publications: OR 1.6 [95% CI 1.1-2.4]), were more often affiliated with institutions in the Western world (OR 2.2 [95% CI 1.2-3.9]), were more likely to publish qualitative studies (versus systematic reviews or experiments: OR 2.7 [95% CI 1.5-4.8]) and to publish in primary healthcare journals (OR 1.7 [95% CI 1.1-2.7]).

CONCLUSIONS

The underrepresentation of women in articles published by general internal medicine journals, in articles from the non-Western world and in systematic reviews and trials should be addressed.

Where to from Here? Women Remain Absent from Senior Academic Positions at Aotearoa New Zealand’s Universities

In light of policies and programs designed to address the domination of academic positions by male, frequently white individuals, we review the participation of women, one of multiple minority identities within the academy, in Aotearoa New Zealand’s academic workforce using employment data from eight universities from 2002–2017. While the number of women employed continues to improve, the rate has slowed in recent years and senior roles remain heavily dominated by men. Women were more likely to be employed at lower levels of seniority, to advance to seniority more slowly than male colleagues, and were more likely to be employed part-time. We call for active strategies to address the cultural and structural bias in universities that favour the hiring and promotion of men to improve workforce diversity at all levels of seniority.