Systematic comparison of gender inequality in scientific rankings across disciplines

TL;DR

This study analyzes gender disparities in scientific rankings across 19 disciplines, revealing persistent underrepresentation of women in top positions despite increased participation, and highlighting the need for targeted interventions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive, cross-disciplinary comparison of gender inequality in scientific productivity, impact, and networks using extensive publication data from 1975 to 2020.

Findings

Women are underrepresented in all fields and top-ranking positions.

Women benefit more from co-authorships, men from productivity in pSTEMs.

Participation of women has increased but disparities persist.

Abstract

The participation of women in academia has increased in the last few decades across many fields (e.g., Computer Science, History, Medicine). However, this increase in the participation of women has not been the same at all career stages. Here, we study how gender participation within different fields is related to gender representation in top-ranking positions in productivity (number of papers), research impact (number of citations), and co-authorship networks (degree of connectivity). We analyzed over 80 million papers published from 1975 to 2020 in 19 academic fields. Our findings reveal that women remain a minority in all 19 fields, with physics, geology, and mathematics having the lowest percentage of papers authored by women at 14% and psychology having the largest percentage at 39%. Women are significantly underrepresented in top-ranking positions (top 10% or higher) across all fields and metrics (productivity, citations, and degree), indicating that it remains challenging for early researchers (especially women) to reach top-ranking positions, as our results reveal the rankings to be rigid over time. Finally, we show that in most fields, women and men with comparable productivity levels and career age tend to attain different levels of citations, where women tend to benefit more from co-authorships, while men tend to benefit more from productivity, especially in pSTEMs. Our findings highlight that while the participation of women has risen in some fields, they remain under-represented in top-ranking positions. Greater gender participation at entry levels often helps representation, but stronger interventions are still needed to achieve long-lasting careers for women and their participation in top-ranking positions.