Global Gender Disparities in Science Cassidy R
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COMMENT In these, people with chronic diseases are including those of powerful food companies. his death, he was professor of clinical brought together to support each other to We believe that the methods used by epidemiology at the Medical Research better manage their conditions. people working in public health to engage Council (MRC) Lifecourse Epidemiology Since 2009, we have been involved in the politicians and food companies need to Unit, University of Southampton, UK; Southampton Initiative for Health, which uses undergo a similar transformation to those professor of cardiovascular medicine at an empowering, problem-solving approach to being used to engage individuals. So far, the Heart Research Center, Oregon Health improve the diets and physical activity levels public-health advo- and Science University in Portland; and of Southampton’s most disadvantaged young “We need to cates have called for visiting professor at the Center for the women and their children. The programme help women regulation and legis- Study of Human Health, Emory University, has involved training the staff of the city’s Sure to feel more lation as a means to Atlanta, Georgia. Mary Barker is Start Children’s Centres — providers of ser- in control of improve diets — an senior lecturer in psychology at the MRC vices such as baby clinics, breastfeeding and their food increased tax on fatty Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University weaning support, dentistry, parenting and choices.” and sugary foods, for of Southampton, UK. Tom Fleming is cookery classes — in having conversations instance. Yet this is professor of developmental biology at the that encourage women to identify problems unlikely to happen because raising the tax Centre for Biological Sciences, University and generate solutions to change behaviour. on soft drinks, say, is not in the interests of of Southampton, UK. Michelle Lampl Although the data suggest that attending industry, or of politicians, who are sensitive is director of the Center for the Study centres staffed by workers using this approach to industry pressures and to a public desire of Human Health and Professor of enhances women’s sense of empowerment, to for cheap soft drinks. Anthropology at Emory University, improve their nutritional status we need both Instead of wagging fingers, we need to Atlanta, Georgia. to help women to feel more in control of their generate consensus. Empowering consum- e-mail: [email protected] food choices and to make it easier for them to ers to call for better access to better food will 1. Chen, L., Magliano, D. J. & Zimmet, P. Z. Nature make better choices. put pressure on politicians to respond to Rev. Endocrinol. 8, 228–236 (2012). On a small scale, such a multilevel voters, and on the food industry to please 2. Laslett, L. J. et al. J. Am. Coll. Cardiol. 60, S1–S49 approach has proved effective. Trials in Can- their customers. (2012). 3. Barker, D. J. P. Brit. Med. Bull. 53, 96–108 (1997). ada, Australia and the United States demon- More than 20 years ago, one of us (D.B.) 4. Barker, D. J. P., Eriksson, J. G., Forsén, T. & 10 strate that the diets of small-town residents wrote in this journal that “if more was Osmond, C. Int. J. Epidemiol. 31, 1235–1239 can be improved when efforts to enhance known about the processes by which the (2002). 5. Robker, R. L. et al. J. Clin. Endocrinol. Metab. 94, people’s sense of empowerment in relation environment in early life influences adult 1533–1540 (2009). to healthy eating are pursued alongside local health … the rise in incidence of ‘Western’ 6. Barker, D. J. P. & Thornburg, K. L. Placenta 34, media campaigns to promote the benefits of disease [might be] minimized.” Today, we 841–845 (2013). 7. Barker, M. et al. Pub. Health Nutr. 11, 1229–1237 eating well, together with programmes that have the knowledge to readily prevent chronic (2008). help people to gain better access to fruits and diseases, had we but the will to do so. ■ 8. Manandhar, D. S. et al. Lancet 364, 970–979 vegetables and skills in food preparation. (2004). 9. Bodenheimer, T., Lorig, K., Holman, H. & The challenge is to scale up such efforts to the David Barker died on 27 August 2013, Grumbach, K. J. Am. Med. Assoc. 288, 2469– wider public-health arena, because this means after writing the first draft of this Comment 2475 (2002). engaging political and commercial interests, (see Nature 502, 304; 2013). Before 10. Barker, D. J. P. Nature 338, 371–372 (1989). Global gender disparities in science Cassidy R. Sugimoto and colleagues present a bibliometric analysis confirming that gender imbalances persist in research output worldwide. espite many good intentions and in areas in which research is expensive8, such childbearing and rearing9, or other variables. initiatives, gender inequality is still as high-energy physics, possibly as a result of It has been suggested that what women rife in science. Although there are policies and procedures relating to funding lack in research output they make up for in Dmore female than male undergraduate and allocations4. Women are less likely to partici- citations, particularly in fields with ‘greater graduate students in many countries1, there pate in collaborations that lead to publication career risk’8 — that is, fields with long lags are relatively few female full professors, and and are much less likely to be listed as either between doctoral education and securing a gender inequalities in hiring2, earnings3, first or last author on a paper7. There is no faculty position, such as ecology. But again, funding4, satisfaction5 and patenting6 persist. consensus on the rea- there is no consensus on the relative impact One focus of previous research has been sons for these gender NATURE.COM of women’s work compared to men’s. the ‘productivity puzzle’. Men publish more differences in research See Nature’s special The present state of quantitative knowl- papers, on average, than women7, although output and collabo- issue on women edge of gender disparities in science has the gap differs between fields and subfields. ration — whether in science: been shaped primarily by anecdotal reports Women publish significantly fewer papers it is down to bias, nature.com/women and studies that are highly localized, 12 DECEMBER 2013 | VOL 504 | NATURE | 211 © 2013 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved COMMENT Women dominate science output in Macedonia, Sri Lanka, Latvia, Ukraine, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Quebec top the North American gender parity charts. Turkmenistan had GENDER AND RESEARCH OUTPUT only 52 papers with The research output of most places is gender assigned dominated by male authors (blue). published in 2008–12. Places where there is greatest gender parity in output (white) are often formerly communist states. Female dominance tends to occur in countries Ratio of female to male authorships (orange) with lower research output. No female Higher number of No data or country had (See go.nature.com/8czxmy for an authorship female authorships fewer than 20 publications interactive version of these data.) Equal monodisciplinary and dated. Further- much-needed empirical evidence of the may have greater gender balance than other more, these studies take little account of inequality that is still all too pervasive in countries. Only nine countries had female the rise in collaborative research and other science. It should serve as a call to action for dominance in terms of proportion of author- changes in scholarly practices. Effective the development of higher education and ships, and five of these (Macedonia, Sri Lanka, policy cannot be built on such foundations. science policy. Latvia, Ukraine, and Bosnia and Herzego- Therefore, we present here a global and vina) had more than 1,000 articles in our cross-disciplinary bibliometric analysis of: BIAS BY NUMBERS analysis. In other words, female authorship first, the relationship between gender and Men dominate scientific production in is more prevalent in countries with lower sci- research output (for which our proxy was nearly every country; to what extent varies entific output. authorship on published papers); second, by region (see ‘Gender and research output’). Countries with more than 1,000 papers the extent of collaboration (for which our We probed the proportion of each gender’s and high degrees of male dominance include, proxy was co-authorships); and third, scien- output by comparing the proportion of iden- unsurprisingly (in order of output): Saudi tific impact of all articles published between tified authorships for each gender on any Arabia, Iran, Japan, Jordan, the United Arab 2008 and 2012 and indexed in the Thom- given paper. For example, for a paper with Emirates, Cameroon, Qatar and Uzbekistan. son Reuters Web of Science databases (for eight authorships, of which six were assigned US states with more than 1,000 articles with which our proxy was citations). We analysed a gender, each of the authorships would be a gender assigned and high male dominance 5,483,841 research papers and review articles granted one-sixth of a paper. These gen- include New Mexico, Mississippi and Wyo- with 27,329,915 authorships. We assigned dered fractions were then aggregated at the ming. The US states and Canadian provinces gender using data from the US Social Security levels of countries and disciplines. It should that are closest to achieving gender parity database, among other sources (see Supple- be stressed that these are authorships, not (and have more than 1,000 articles) include mentary Information; go.nature.com/j3otjz). individuals, therefore no author name dis- Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine, Manitoba, We find that in the most productive coun- ambiguation was necessary (see Supplemen- Nova Scotia and Quebec. Again, some of tries, all articles with women in dominant tary Information).