The role of gender in scholarly authorship

TL;DR

Despite apparent progress, gender disparities in academia persist subtly, with men dominating prestigious authorship positions and women underrepresented in single-authored papers across various fields, as shown by large-scale analysis.

Contribution

This study provides a comprehensive large-scale analysis revealing persistent and subtle gender disparities in scholarly authorship across multiple disciplines.

Findings

Men dominate first and last author positions in some fields.

Women are underrepresented as single-authors.

Gender disparities remain despite overall progress.

Abstract

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 re- 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 appear in scholarly authorship.