Women in Academic Science: A Changing Landscape

What does gender has to do with math? Complex questions require complex answers

Whether mathematics is a gendered domain or not is a long-lasting issue bringing along major social and educational implications. The females' underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has been considered one of the key signs of the math gender gap, although the current view largely attributes the origin of this phenomenon to sociocultural factors. Indeed, recent approaches to math gender differences reached the universal conclusion that nature and nurture exert reciprocal effects on each other, establishing the need for approaching the study of the math gender issue only once its intrinsic complexity has been accepted. Building upon a flourishing literature, this review provides an updated synthesis of the evidence for math gender equality at the start, and for math gender inequality on the go, challenging the role of biological factors. In particular, by combining recent findings from different research areas, the paper discusses the persistence of the "math male myth" and the associated "female are not good at math myth," drawing attention to the complex interplay of social and cultural forces that support such stereotypes. The suggestion is made that longevity of these myths results from the additive effects of two independent cognitive biases associated with gender stereotypes and with math stereotypes, respectively. Scholars' responsibility in amplifying these myths by pursuing some catching lines of research is also discussed.

Underrepresentation of women in the economics profession more pronounced in the United States compared to heterogeneous Europe

In economics, as in many high-skilled professions, women are underrepresented. Web-scraped data provide information on the situation of women in economics around the globe. We document the underrepresentation of women for a large set of countries using the same objective method. We find differences between countries and regions, which might reflect cultural aspects and norms. Europe is more gender-equal than the United States; institutions that are higher ranked in terms of research output have fewer women in senior positions than lower-ranked institutions. In the United States, this also holds for junior positions. The paper thus further informs the debate and shows how female ratios differ on a global scale.

Based on a dataset that we collected from the top research institutions in economics around the globe (including universities, business schools, and other organizations, such as central banks), we document the underrepresentation of women in economics. For the 238 universities and business schools in the sample, women hold 25% of senior-level positions (full professor or associate professor) and 37% of junior-level positions. In the 82 US universities and business schools, the figures are 20% on the senior level and 32% on the entry level, while in the 122 European institutions, the numbers are 27% and 38%, respectively, with some heterogeneity across countries. The numbers also show that the highest-ranking institutions (in terms of research output) have fewer women in senior positions. Moreover, in the United States, this effect is even present on the junior level. The “leaky pipeline” may hence begin earlier than oftentimes assumed and is even more of an issue in the highly integrated market of the United States. In Europe, an institution ranked 100 places higher has 3 percentage points fewer women in senior positions, but in the United States, it is almost 5 percentage points.

Predicting the future impact of Computer Science researchers: Is there a gender bias?

The advent of large-scale bibliographic databases and powerful prediction algorithms led to calls for data-driven approaches for targeting scarce funds at researchers with high predicted future scientific impact. The potential side-effects and fairness implications of such approaches are unknown, however. Using a large-scale bibliographic data set of N = 111,156 Computer Science researchers active from 1993 to 2016, I build and evaluate a realistic scientific impact prediction model. Given the persistent under-representation of women in Computer Science, the model is audited for disparate impact based on gender. Random forests and Gradient Boosting Machines are used to predict researchers’ h-index in 2010 from their bibliographic profiles in 2005. Based on model predictions, it is determined whether the researcher will become a high-performer with an h-index in the top-25% of the discipline-specific h-index distribution. The models predict the future h-index with an accuracy of $$R^2 = 0.875$$ R 2 = 0.875 and correctly classify 91.0% of researchers as high-performers and low-performers. Overall accuracy does not vary strongly across researcher gender. Nevertheless, there is indication of disparate impact against women. The models under-estimate the true h-index of female researchers more strongly than the h-index of male researchers. Further, women are 8.6% less likely to be predicted to become high-performers than men. In practice, hiring, tenure, and funding decisions that are based on model predictions risk to perpetuate the under-representation of women in Computer Science.

Equal Representation Does Not Mean Equal Opportunity: Women Academics Perceive a Thicker Glass Ceiling in Social and Behavioral Fields Than in the Natural Sciences and Economics

In the study of women in academia, the focus is often particularly on women’s stark underrepresentation in the math-intensive fields of natural sciences, technology, and economics (NTE). In the non-math-intensive of fields life, social and behavioral (LSB) sciences, gender issues are seemingly less at stake because, on average, women are well-represented. However, in the current study, we demonstrate that equal gender representation in LSB disciplines does not guarantee women’s equal opportunity to advance to full professorship—to the contrary. With a cross-sectional survey among N = 2,109 academics at mid-level careers (i.e., assistant and associate professors) in the Netherlands, we test the hypothesis that in LSB (more than NTE), female academics perceive to hit a “thicker” glass ceiling—that is, they see a sharper contrast between the high representation of women at the lower compared to the top levels. We test whether this predicts female academics’ lower estimated chances to reach full professorship relative to men in LSB (but not NTE). We introduce a novel perceived glass ceiling index (GCI), calculated based on academics’ perceptions of the share of women and men in their direct work environment minus their perceptions of gender ratio among full professors in their field. Results confirm that the perceived glass ceiling is thicker in the non-math-intensive LSB compared to math-intensive NTE fields. Furthermore, only in LSB (but not NTE), women perceived a thicker glass ceiling than men. Moreover, only among female academics, the thicker the perceived glass ceiling, the lower their estimated chances to become full professor 1 day. Combined, a moderated mediation showed that for women only, a thicker perceived glass ceiling in LSB compared to NTE disciplines predicted their lower estimated chances to advance to full professor level. No such mediation occurred for men. We conclude that women’s higher numerical representation in LSB disciplines does not negate a male-dominant normative standard about academic leadership and success. Paradoxically, the perceived odds for female academics to reach the top of their field are lower in fields where they are relatively highly represented, and this may pose unique barriers to women’s perceived opportunities for career success.

Nevertheless She Persisted? Gender Peer Effects in Doctoral STEM Programs

We study the effects of peer gender composition in STEM doctoral programs on persistence and degree completion. Leveraging unique new data and quasi-random variation in gender composition across cohorts within programs, we show that women entering cohorts with no female peers are 11.7pp less likely to graduate within 6 years than their male counterparts. A 1 sd increase in the percentage of female students differentially increases women's probability of on-time graduation by 4.4pp. These gender peer effects function primarily through changes in the probability of dropping out in the first year of a Ph.D. program.

Job analysis and job classification for addressing pay inequality in organizations: Adjusting our methods within a shifting legal landscape

Pay inequality remains a pervasive problem within the workforce. However, it can be challenging for even well-meaning and responsible organizations to effectively assess which jobs should be considered equivalent and paid the same based on both legal criteria (which have shifted over time and differ across specific statutes and jurisdictions) and scientific evidence (which continues to amass). This paper intends to initiate a solution-focused discussion on how organizations can proactively categorize jobs so that pay decisions that are made about men and women are both legally defensible and fair. We propose that integrating the job analysis/job classification literature and the pay discrimination literature (e.g., legal opinions given by courts) will inform this discussion. We first review federal and state legislation and court opinions that have set legal standards for identifying pay discrimination. We then review the relevance of job analysis/job classification for systematically defining and categorizing jobs, highlighting the legal issues that should be but (to the best of our knowledge) have not been considered when undertaking such processes. Our intention is for this article to spark dialogue among researchers and practitioners regarding the identification of methods with which organizations can strive to meet equal pay standards and goals, applying both legal and scientific perspectives.

Are female scientists less inclined to publish alone? The gender solo research gap

In solo research, scientists compete individually for prestige, sending clear signals about their research ability, avoiding problems in credit allocation, and reducing conflicts about authorship. We examine to what extent male and female scientists differ in their use of solo publishing across various dimensions. This research is the first to comprehensively study the “gender solo research gap” among all internationally visible scientists within a whole national higher education system. We examine the gap through mean “individual solo publishing rates” found in “individual publication portfolios” constructed for each Polish university professor. We use the practical significance/statistical significance difference (based on the effect-size r coefficient) and our analyses indicate that while some gender differences are statistically significant, they have no practical significance. Using a partial effects of fractional logistic regression approach, we estimate the probability of conducting solo research. In none of the models does gender explain the variability of the individual solo publishing rate. The strongest predictor of individual solo publishing rate is the average team size, publishing in STEM fields negatively affects the rate, publishing in male-dominated disciplines positively affects it, and the influence of international collaboration is negative. The gender solo research gap in Poland is much weaker than expected: within a more general trend toward team research and international research, gender differences in solo research are much weaker and less relevant than initially assumed. We use our unique biographical, administrative, publication, and citation database (“Polish Science Observatory”) with metadata on all Polish scientists present in Scopus (N = 25,463) and their 158,743 Scopus-indexed articles published in 2009–2018, including 18,900 solo articles.

"Broad" Impact: Perceptions of Sex/Gender-Related Psychology Journals

Because men are overrepresented within positions of power, men are perceived as the default in academia (androcentrism). Androcentric bias emerges whereby research by men and/or dominated by men is perceived as higher quality and gains more attention. We examined if these androcentric biases materialize within fields that study bias (psychology). How do individuals in close contact with psychology view psychology research outlets (i.e., journals) with titles including the words women, gender, sex, or feminism (sex/gender-related) or contain the words men or masculinity (men-related; Study 1) versus psychology journals that publish other-specialized research, and do these perceptions differ in the general public? While the men-related journal was less meritorious than its other-specialty journal, evidence emerged supporting androcentric bias such that the men-related journal was more favorable than the other sex/gender-related journals (Study 1). Further, undergraduate men taking psychology classes rated sex/gender-related versus other-specialty journals as less favorable, were less likely to recommend subscription (Studies 1-2), and rated the journals as lower quality (Study 2 only). Low endorsement of feminist ideology was associated with less support for sex/gender-related journals versus matched other-specialty journals (Studies 1-2). Decreased subscription recommendations for sex/gender-related journals (and the men-related journal) were mediated by decreased favorability and quality beliefs, especially for men (for the sex/gender-related journals) and those low in feminist ideology (Studies 1-2). However, we found possible androcentric-interest within the public sphere. The public reach of articles (as determined by Altmetrics) published in sex/gender-related was greater than other-specialty journals (Study 3). The consequences of these differential perceptions for students versus the public and the impact on women's advancement in social science and psychological science are discussed.

Assessing Gender Bias in Particle Physics and Social Science Recommendations for Academic Jobs

We investigated gender bias in letters of recommendation as a possible cause of the under-representation of women in Experimental Particle Physics (EPP), where about 15% of faculty are female—well below the 60% level in psychology and sociology. We analyzed 2206 letters in EPP and these two social sciences using standard lexical measures as well as two new measures: author status and an open-ended search for gendered language. In contrast to former studies, women were not depicted as more communal, less agentic, or less standout. Lexical measures revealed few gender differences in either discipline. The open-ended analysis revealed disparities favoring women in social science and men in EPP. However, female EPP candidates were characterized as “brilliant” in nearly three times as many letters as were men.

Professors Prioritize Increasing Female Retention in Academic Physics Over Advisee's Interests

Decades of initiatives have striven to fix the so-called "leaking pipeline" problem-persistent high attrition of women from the career/educational path toward STEM professorship. Though these initiatives call on academics to increase female retention along this path, it remains unknown whether academics actually prioritize this goal. To investigate this, we tested whether academics would prioritize female retention at the cost of a competing goal when giving career advice to students at risk of leaving the "pipeline." We present results from a national survey in which United States professors (n = 364) responded to vignettes of three hypothetical undergraduates, rating the extent to which they would encourage or discourage each student from pursuing a PhD in physics. Professors were randomly assigned vignettes with either male or female gender pronouns. Two vignettes featured students who cogently explained why remaining in the physics pipeline would not match their individual goals and interests, while another vignette presented a student with goals and interests that clearly matched pursuing physics graduate school. Professors who received female-gendered vignettes were thus forced to choose between prioritizing striving to increase female retention in physics and acting in the best interest of the individual student. We present evidence that professors seem prepared to encourage women more strongly than men to remain in physics, even when remaining is contrary to the stated goals and interests of the student: Our logistic regression results suggest that professors have higher odds of encouraging women over men, net of vignette and other controls. We also find that male professors have higher odds of encouraging undergraduates and find no evidence that, relative to non-STEM professors, STEM professors have higher odds of encouraging women over men.

Gender and Nationality Trends in Manuscripts Published in Prominent Gastroenterology Journals Between 1997 and 2017

BACKGROUND

Gender disparities remain in the field of gastroenterology (GI) despite the decreasing gender gap in the medical field overall. We sought to examine primary and last female authorship as a marker of academic opportunity and advancement to assess the proportion of women publishing in GI over 20 years (1997-2017).

METHODS

In this observational study, we assessed the gender and nationality of primary and last authors of original research manuscripts in three GI journals (Gastroenterology, Gut, and American Journal of Gastroenterology) across a 20-year period in 5-year intervals (in 1997, 2002, 2007, and 2012). We used a validated gender-determining algorithm, genderize.io, to classify gender. Our primary outcome was the proportion of female primary and last authors, with secondary measures assessing trends in gender and nationality.

RESULTS

Through the Genderize.io gender database, we were able to identify the gender for 3,673 (95.9%) of primary author names and 3,504 (95.4%) of last author names in the 3,615 manuscripts evaluated. Overall, there was a significant increase in female primary authors over time, from 18.1% in 1997 to 42.6% in 2017, a 6.0% increase per 5-year period (95% CI 4.8-7.2%). A similar trend was found for female last authors, however, at a slower rate, from 8.3% in 1997 to 24.7% in 2017, a 3.5% increase per 5 years (95% CI 2.5-4.4%). These trends were noted cumulatively, and in each journal individually. Manuscripts with a female last author were more likely to demonstrate a female primary author.

CONCLUSION

Female authorship in high-impact gastroenterology journals has increased over time. Last authorship has lagged primary authorship in female representation and has increased more slowly over time. Interventions to reduce gender disparity in GI research should focus on the transition from first to last authorship.

Self-Efficacy Beliefs of University Students: Examining Factor Validity and Measurement Invariance of the New Academic Self-Efficacy Scale

Academic self-efficacy beliefs influence students' academic and career choices, as well as motivational factors and learning strategies promoting effective academic success. Nevertheless, few studies have focused on the academic self-efficacy of university students in comparison to students at other levels. Furthermore, extant measures present several limitations. The first aim of this study was to develop a reliable and valid scale assessing university students' self-efficacy beliefs in managing academic tasks. The second aim was to investigate differences in academic self-efficacy due to gender, years of enrollment, and student status. The study involved 831 students (age M = 21.09 years; SD = 1.34 years; 66.3% women) enrolled in undergraduate programs. Indicators of academic experiences and performance (i.e., number of exams passed and average exam rating) were collected. A new scale measuring students' academic self-efficacy beliefs was administered. Results from a preliminary Exploratory Factor Analysis were consistently supported by findings from a Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Multigroup CFA supported the presence of measurement invariance. Analyses revealed that the new scale has eight factors: "Planning Academic Activities," "Learning Strategies," "Information Retrieval," "Working in Groups," "Management of Relationships with Teachers," "Managing Lessons," "Stress Management," and "Thesis Work." Self-efficacy dimensions showed significant relations with academic experiences and students' performance indicators, as well as differences due to gender, years of enrollment, and student status. Findings are discussed in terms of practical implications for the implementation of intervention programs aimed at fostering self-efficacy beliefs and academic success.

Academics as Agentic Superheroes: Female academics' lack of fit with the agentic stereotype of success limits their career advancement

Gender gaps in academia persist with women being less likely to attain leadership, earning lower salaries, and receiving less research funding and resources compared to their male peers. The current research demonstrates yet another, more intangible gender gap in academia called lack of fit, whereby compared to male academics, female academics perceive higher misfit between their professional self-concept and the agentic 'superhero' stereotype of the successful academic. The entire population of Dutch academics (i.e., assistant, associate, and full professors from 14 universities) was approached to participate in a nationwide survey. Results from this unique dataset (N = 3978) demonstrate that academics perceive agency (e.g., self-confident, self-focused, competitive) as more descriptive of the stereotypical successful academic than communality (e.g., team-oriented, good teacher, collegial). Importantly, early career female academics perceived highest lack of fit with this narrowly-defined agentic occupational stereotype, which was correlated with lower work engagement, professional identification and career efficacy, and higher work exhaustion and exit intentions. Thus, lack of fit seems yet another barrier contributing to pervasive gender gaps in academia. Implications for building more inclusive academic cultures, where not only agentic but also communal academic practice is recognized and rewarded are discussed.

Sixty years of gender representation in children's books: Conditions associated with overrepresentation of male versus female protagonists

As a reflection of prominent cultural norms, children's literature plays an integral role in the acquisition and development of societal attitudes. Previous reports of male overrepresentation in books targeted towards children are consistent with a history of gender disparity across media and society. However, it is unknown whether such bias has been attenuated in recent years with increasing emphasis on gender equity and greater accessibility of books. Here, we provide an up-to-date estimate of the relative proportion of males and females featured as single protagonists in 3,280 children's books (0-16 years) published between 1960-2020. We find that although the proportion of female protagonists has increased over this 60-year period, male protagonists remain overrepresented even in recent years. Importantly, we also find persistent effects related to author gender, age of the target audience, character type (human vs. non-human), and book genre (fiction vs. non-fiction) on the male-to-female ratio of protagonists. We suggest that this comprehensive account of the factors influencing the rates of appearance of male and female protagonists can be leveraged to develop specific recommendations for promoting more equitable gender representation in children's literature, with important consequences for child development and society.

Towards women-inclusive ecology: Representation, behavior, and perception of women at an international conference

Conferences are ideal platforms for studying gender gaps in science because they are important cultural events that reflect barriers to women in academia. Here, we explored women’s participation in ecology conferences by analyzing female representation, behavior, and personal experience at the 1st Meeting of the Iberian Society of Ecology (SIBECOL). The conference had 722 attendees, 576 contributions, and 27 scientific sessions. The gender of attendees and presenters was balanced (48/52% women/men), yet only 29% of the contributions had a woman as last author. Moreover, men presented most of the keynote talks (67%) and convened most of the sessions. Our results also showed that only 32% of the questions were asked by women, yet the number of questions raised by women increased when the speaker or the convener was a woman. Finally, the post-conference survey revealed that attendees had a good experience and did not perceive the event as a threatening context for women. Yet, differences in the responses between genders suggest that women tended to have a worse experience than their male counterparts. Although our results showed clear gender biases, most of the participants of the conference failed to detect it. Overall, we highlight the challenge of increasing women’s scientific leadership, visibility and interaction in scientific conferences and we suggest several recommendations for creating inclusive meetings, thereby promoting equal opportunities for all participants.

The gender gap in highly prestigious international research awards, 2001–2020

This study examines gender disparities in the world’s 141 most prestigious international research awards. I find that (a) from 2001 to 2020 these awards were received 3,445 times by 2,011 men and 262 women; (b) women’s share increased from an annual average of 6% during 2001–2005 to an annual average of 19% during 2016–2020; (c) 49 of the 141 awards were not received by women during 2016–2020; and (d) when the numbers of female full professors are taken into consideration, the gender gap remains highly disproportionate in biological and life sciences, computer science, and mathematics. Overall, women would be expected to increase their share of awards by nearly 50% to achieve parity with men today. The study shows great similarities between men and women award recipients in journal articles per author, the average number of authors per article, the proportion of articles in top journals, citations per article, and participation in large research groups and international collaborations. I conclude that the gender gap in highly prestigious research awards is largely a result of demographic inertia and other factors that deserve further investigation.

A multi-year science research or engineering experience in high school gives women confidence to continue in the STEM pipeline or seek advancement in other fields: A 20-year longitudinal study

There remains a large gender imbalance in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce deriving from a leaky pipeline where women start losing interest and confidence in science and engineering as early as primary school. To address this disparity, the Science Research & Engineering Program (SREP) at Hathaway Brown School was established in 1998 to engage and expose their all-female high school students to STEM fields through an internship-like multi-year research experience at partnering institutions. We compare data from existing Hathaway Brown School SREP alumnae records from 1998-2018 (n = 495) to Non-SREP students and national datasets (National Center for Educational Statistics, National Science Foundation, and US Census data) to assess how SREP participation may influence persistence in the STEM pipeline and whether SREP alumnae attribute differences in these outcomes to the confidence and skill sets they learned from the SREP experience. The results reveal that women who participate in the SREP are more likely to pursue a major in a STEM field and continue on to a STEM occupation compared to non-SREP students, national female averages, and national subsets. Participants attribute their outcomes to an increase in confidence, establishment of technical and professional skills, and other traits strengthened through the SREP experience. These data suggest that implementing similar experiential programs for women in science and engineering at the high school stage could be a promising way to combat the remaining gender gap in STEM fields.

What Are the Drivers of Citations?: Application in Tourism and Hospitality Journals

In line with the qualitative and quantitative growth of academic papers, it is critical to understand the factors driving citations in scholarly articles. This study discovered the up-to-date academic structure in the tourism and hospitality literature and tested the comprehensive sets of factors driving citation counts using articles published in first-tier hospitality and tourism journals found on the Web of Science. To further test the effects of research topic structure on citation counts, unsupervised topic modeling was conducted with 9910 tourism and hospitality papers published in 12 journals over 10 years. Articles specific to online media and the sharing economy have received numerous citations and that recently published papers with particular research topics (e.g., rural tourism and eco-tourism) were frequently cited. This study makes a major contribution to hospitality and tourism literature by testing the effects of topic structure and topic originality discovered by text mining on citation counts.

The Influence of Family Function on State Anxiety of Chinese College Students During the Epidemic of COVID-19

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) may affect mental health. There is little research about the influence of family function on the state anxiety of college students in the context of the global pandemic. The study aimed to clarify that generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and trait anxiety had mediating effects in family function on the state anxiety of Chinese college students following the "stay-at-home" order during the outbreak of COVID-19. This cross-sectional study was conducted online with 1,039 respondents. We analyzed demographics, The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (ST-AI) and Chinese Family Function Scale (FAD-18), Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), and used path analysis to discuss the influence of family function on state and trait anxiety. The results showed that female students' state and trait anxiety was higher than that of male students (P < 0.05). Medical students' state and trait anxiety was lower than that of literature students (P < 0.05). The GAD of the male was lower compared with the female. The score of family function has significant differences in gender, age, education, and region (P < 0.05). Gender, family function, state anxiety, trait anxiety, and GAD relate to others (r = 0.07∼0.85, p < 0.05). The results of fit indices for measurement invariance models showed that the impact of family function among GAD, state and trait anxiety across gender is significantly different (each step p < 0.05). GAD and trait anxiety had a complete meditating effect between family function and state anxiety (the proportion of standard indirect mediating effect was 24.94% in females and 36.79% in males). A healthy family function may alleviate GAD and anxiety of college students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator

Gender equality is a major problem that places women at a disadvantage thereby stymieing economic growth and societal advancement. In the last two decades, extensive research has been conducted on gender related issues, studying both their antecedents and consequences. However, existing literature reviews fail to provide a comprehensive and clear picture of what has been studied so far, which could guide scholars in their future research. Our paper offers a scoping review of a large portion of the research that has been published over the last 22 years, on gender equality and related issues, with a specific focus on business and economics studies. Combining innovative methods drawn from both network analysis and text mining, we provide a synthesis of 15,465 scientific articles. We identify 27 main research topics, we measure their relevance from a semantic point of view and the relationships among them, highlighting the importance of each topic in the overall gender discourse. We find that prominent research topics mostly relate to women in the workforce-e.g., concerning compensation, role, education, decision-making and career progression. However, some of them are losing momentum, and some other research trends-for example related to female entrepreneurship, leadership and participation in the board of directors-are on the rise. Besides introducing a novel methodology to review broad literature streams, our paper offers a map of the main gender-research trends and presents the most popular and the emerging themes, as well as their intersections, outlining important avenues for future research.

Developmental Histories Facilitating the Emergence of Creative Scientific Expertise: The Role of Developed Cognitive Talents, Education, and Social and Cultural Contexts

Understanding how individual and contextual factors collectively contribute to the developmental histories that facilitate the emergence of creative expertise in science is improved by considering the contribution of the broad structure of developed cognitive abilities to creativity, prospective research on the high achieving or gifted students who may choose careers in and end up as creative scientists later in life, as well as retrospective studies of established creative scientists themselves and what their educational histories reveal. We first review and elaborate on these connections as documented in research which explore the development of talent, including cognitive mechanisms that include math and spatial reasoning and science related educational opportunities. We propose a research thought experiment that utilizes the multi-trait, multi-method matrix, and bifactor modeling to help understand the true overlap between measurement structures of cognitive and creative aptitudes. Then we explore the social and cultural contexts that may facilitate and/or hinder creative solutions in science through the lens of how these ecosystems influence talent development for gifted students and also the production of elite scientists. Based on this review, some policies will be suggested that may enhance the development of scientific creativity and broader societal innovation and expand the pipeline to include and fully develop the talents of disadvantaged students and provide nurturing environments to improve the likelihood of the emergence of scientific creative expertise.

Collaboration enhances career progression in academic science, especially for female researchers

Collaboration and diversity are increasingly promoted in science. Yet how collaborations influence academic career progression, and whether this differs by gender, remains largely unknown. Here, we use co-authorship ego networks to quantify collaboration behaviour and career progression of a cohort of contributors to biennial International Society of Behavioral Ecology meetings (1992, 1994, 1996). Among this cohort, women were slower and less likely to become a principal investigator (PI; approximated by having at least three last-author publications) and published fewer papers over fewer years (i.e. had shorter academic careers) than men. After adjusting for publication number, women also had fewer collaborators (lower adjusted network size) and published fewer times with each co-author (lower adjusted tie strength), albeit more often with the same group of collaborators (higher adjusted clustering coefficient). Authors with stronger networks were more likely to become a PI, and those with less clustered networks did so more quickly. Women, however, showed a stronger positive relationship with adjusted network size (increased career length) and adjusted tie strength (increased likelihood to become a PI). Finally, early-career network characteristics correlated with career length. Our results suggest that large and varied collaboration networks are positively correlated with career progression, especially for women.

"Where will I belong more?": The role of belonging comparisons between STEM fields in high school girls' STEM interest

In trying to understand women’s underrepresentation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), most existing research focuses on one STEM-field or collapses across all STEM-fields. However, these fields differ vastly in female representation: women tend to be most strongly underrepresented in technological and computer science university majors and to a lesser extent in mathematics and chemistry, while they are less underrepresented in biological sciences. To understand this variability, we examine how girls in the process of making higher education choices compare different STEM-fields to each other. We draw upon dimensional comparison theory, which argues that educational motivation involves intra-individual comparisons of achievement across school subjects. However, previous research has shown that a focus on achievement in STEM is not enough, anticipated belonging in a STEM-field plays a pivotal role in interest in pursuing that field. Consistent with this, we examined participants’ comparisons of anticipated belonging across STEM-fields. A sample of 343 high school girls in STEM-focused university tracks completed a survey on their anticipated belonging and interest in pursuing different STEM majors. Latent Profile Analysis resulted in 3 profiles, showing different belonging comparison patterns across STEM-fields. Examining these comparisons—both within and across profiles—showed how girls felt pushed away from certain STEM-fields and pulled toward others. The findings suggest that for interest in pursuing specific STEM-fields it is not just about the level of anticipated belonging within that STEM-field, but just as much about the level of anticipated belonging in comparison to another STEM-field.

On Methods and Marshmallows: A Roadmap for Science That Is Openly Feminist and Radically Open

In this commentary, we argue that feminist science and open science can benefit from each other’s wisdom and critiques in service of creating systems that produce the highest quality science with the maximum potential for improving the lives of women. To do this, we offer a constructive analysis, focusing on common methods used in open science, including open materials and data, preregistration, and large sample sizes, and illuminate potential benefits and costs from a feminist science perspective. We also offer some solutions and deeper questions both for individual researchers and the feminist psychology and open science communities. By broadening our focus from a myopic prioritization of certain methodological and analytic approaches in open science, we hope to give a balanced perspective of science that emerges from each movement’s strengths and is openly feminist and radically open.

Gender bias in academia: A lifetime problem that needs solutions

Despite increased awareness of the lack of gender equity in academia and a growing number of initiatives to address issues of diversity, change is slow, and inequalities remain. A major source of inequity is gender bias, which has a substantial negative impact on the careers, work-life balance, and mental health of underrepresented groups in science. Here, we argue that gender bias is not a single problem but manifests as a collection of distinct issues that impact researchers' lives. We disentangle these facets and propose concrete solutions that can be adopted by individuals, academic institutions, and society.

Gender issues in fundamental physics: A bibliometric analysis

I analyze bibliometric data about fundamental physics worldwide from 1970 to now, extracting quantitative data about gender issues. I do not find significant gender differences in hiring rates, hiring timing, career gaps and slowdowns, abandonment rates, citation, and self-citation patterns. Furthermore, various bibliometric indicators (number of fractionally counted papers, citations, etc.) exhibit a productivity gap at hiring moments, at career level, and without integrating over careers. The gap persists after accounting for confounding factors and manifests as an increasing fraction of male authors going from average to top authors in terms of bibliometric indices, with a quantitative shape that can be fitted by higher male variability.

Global and Latin American female participation in evidence-based software engineering: a systematic mapping study

Context

While the digital economy requires a new generation of technology for scientists and practitioners, the software engineering (SE) field faces a gender crisis. SE research is a global enterprise that requires the participation of both genders for the advancement of science and evidence-based practice. However, women across the world tend to be significantly underrepresented in such research, receiving less funding and less participation, frequently, than men as authors in research publications. Data about this phenomenon is still sparse and incomplete; particularly in evidence-based software engineering (EBSE), there are no studies that analyze the participation of women in this research area.

Objective

The objective of this work is to present the results of a systematic mapping study (SM) conducted to collect and evaluate evidence on female researchers who have contributed to the area of EBSE.

Method

Our SM was performed by manually searching studies in the major conferences and journals of EBSE. We identified 981 studies and 183 were authored/co-authored by women and, therefore, included.

Results

Contributions from women in secondary studies have globally increased over the years, but it is still concentrated in European countries. Additionally, collaboration among research groups is still fragile, based on a few women as a bridge. Latin American researchers contribute a great deal to the field, despite they do not collaborate as much within their region.

Conclusions

The findings from this study are expected to be aggregated to the existing knowledge with respect to women’s contribution to the EBSE area. We expect that our results bring up a reflection on the gender issue and motivate actions and policies to attract female researchers to this area.

Spatial Abilities for Architecture: Cross Sectional and Longitudinal Assessment With Novel and Existing Spatial Ability Tests

This study examined individual differences in spatial abilities of architecture students. Students at different educational levels were assessed on spatial ability tests that varied in their domain-specificity to architecture, with the hypothesis that larger differences between beginner and advanced students will emerge on more domain-specific tests. We also investigated gender differences in test performance and controlled for general reasoning ability across analyses. In a cross sectional study, master students (N = 91) outperformed beginners (N = 502) on two novel tests involving perspective taking and object composition, as well as on a standardized visualization of cross-sections test, but not on a standardized mental rotations test. Longitudinally (N = 117), spatial performance improved after the first bachelor year on visualization of cross-sections, object composition and mental rotation. Although both genders showed higher spatial test performance with increased experience, male students outperformed females across tests and levels of education. The results overall confirmed improvements in spatial performance during architecture studies, with partial support for the domain-specificity hypothesis. A gender gap among advanced students calls for further examining architecture-specific spatial thinking.

Development of Math Attitudes and Math Self-Concepts: Gender Differences, Implicit-Explicit Dissociations, and Relations to Math Achievement

Three hundred and ninety-one children (195 girls; M_age  = 9.56 years) attending Grades 1 and 5 completed implicit and explicit measures of math attitudes and math self-concepts. Math grades were obtained. Multilevel analyses showed that first-grade girls held a strong negative implicit attitude about math, despite no gender differences in math grades or self-reported (explicit) positivity about math. The explicit measures significantly predicted math grades, and implicit attitudes accounted for additional variance in boys. The contrast between the implicit (negativity for girls) and explicit (positivity for girls and boys) effects suggest implicit-explicit dissociations in children, which have also been observed in adults. Early-emerging implicit attitudes may be a foundation for the later development of explicit attitudes and beliefs about math.

Men, women and STEM: Why the differences and what should be done?

It is a well-known and widely lamented fact that men outnumber women in a number of fields in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths). The most commonly discussed explanations for the gender gaps are discrimination and socialization, and the most common policy prescriptions target those ostensible causes. However, a great deal of evidence in the behavioural sciences suggests that discrimination and socialization are only part of the story. The purpose of this paper is to highlight other aspects of the story: aspects that are commonly overlooked or downplayed. More precisely, the paper has two main aims. The first is to examine the evidence that factors other than workplace discrimination contribute to the gender gaps in STEM. These include relatively large average sex differences in career and lifestyle preferences, and relatively small average differences in cognitive aptitudes – some favouring males, others favouring females – which are associated with progressively larger differences the further above the average one looks. The second aim is to examine the evidence suggesting that these sex differences are not purely a product of social factors but also have a substantial biological (i.e. inherited) component. A more complete picture of the causes of the unequal sex ratios in STEM may productively inform policy discussions.

Publishing, signaling, social capital, and gender: Determinants of becoming a tenured professor in German political science

We apply event history analysis to analyze career and publication data of virtually all political scientists in German university departments, showing that each published refereed journal article increases a political scientist’s chance for tenure by 9 percent, while other publications affect the odds for tenure only marginally and in some cases even negatively. Each received award and third party funding increases the odds for tenure by respectively 41 and 26 percent, while international experience, social capital and children hardly have a strong influence. Surprisingly, having degrees from a German university of excellence strongly decreases the odds for tenure. Women with similar credentials have at least 20 percent higher odds to get tenure than men. Our data therefore suggests that the lower factual hiring rates of women are better explained by a leaky pipeline, e.g. women leaving academia, rather than because women are not hired even when they are as productive as men. The article contributes to a better understanding of the role of meritocratic and non-meritocratic factors in achieving highly competitive job positions.

Gender differences in the Israeli academia: a bibliometric analysis of different disciplines

Purpose

This study explores faculty members' outputs and citations by gender and academic rank in Israeli academia. The study focuses on the connection between research productivity and underrepresentation of women in academia. To this end, four fields were chosen, each representing a different discipline: Psychology (social sciences), Public Health (health sciences), Linguistics (humanities), and Chemistry (Exact sciences).

Design/methodology/approach

The name, the rank and the gender of the researchers were collected from the researchers' websites and those of their departments. The number of publications and citations were retrieved from Scopus.

Findings

Findings revealed that there is a significant difference between the median number of men and women in Chemistry concerning publications and citations and in Psychology concerning citations. Moreover, in all four disciplines, females' average number of publications was lower than that of males', and that in three out of the four disciplines (Psychology, Public Health and Chemistry), men published more in top journals (the top 5%) than females, while the reverse was true of Linguistics. Furthermore, in three disciplines (Public Health, Linguistics and Chemistry), there is an increase in the average citations per female researchers between 2015 and 2019. Further, in all disciplines, women collaborated more than men.

Originality/value

As only a few studies in Israel have explored faculty members' outputs and citations, this study contributes and enlarges the Israeli research concerning this topic.

Stewart-Williams and Halsey argue persuasively that gender bias is just one of many causes of women’s underrepresentation in science

Stewart-Williams and Halsey provide an unusually broad synthesis of the enormous literature on gender gaps in hiring, letters of recommendation, mathematical and spatial abilities, email appointment-making, people vs things orientation, within-gender variability, salaries, occupational preferences, and employment discrimination. They argue that sociocultural factors, while important, cannot by themselves account for the entirety of these gaps. In addition, they argue that factors resulting from evolutionary origins, cognitive ability gaps at the extreme right tail of the distribution, and underlying gender differences in abilities, preferences, and values are needed to explain why women are less well represented in the most math-intensive fields. In our commentary, we reprise our own recent synthesis (unpublished) of gender gaps in six domains (letters of recommendation, academic hiring, salaries, teaching evaluations, journal acceptance rates, grant funding success) and put our results in the context of these authors' arguments.

The impact of fleeting exposure to female exemplars of success in STEM

Two studies tested the impact of subtle cues that associate masculinity with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) success on women’s STEM experiences. Study 1 was a field study conducted in a university campus engineering building where photos of graduating classes were displayed. In Study 2, STEM majors viewed a mock website that depicted either exclusively male or mixed-gender STEM students. Across both studies, women reported greater fundamental need threat—a composite of threats to belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful existence—after viewing photos of exclusively male STEM students than did men. This gender effect disappeared when photos included female STEM students. Direct effects of gender and photo condition on career intentions were not observed, but indirect effects were obtained through need threat. Thus, because fleeting exposure to subtle background images associating STEM success with masculinity can negatively impact women’s fundamental needs, cues in academic environments should be carefully considered.

Making it to the PhD: Gender and student performance in sub-Saharan Africa

Women’s underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) impedes progress in solving Africa’s complex development problems. As in other regions, women’s participation in STEM drops progressively moving up the education and career ladder, with women currently constituting 30% of Africa’s STEM researchers. This study elucidates gender-based differences in PhD performance using new survey data from 227 alumni of STEM PhD programs in 17 African countries. We find that, compared to their male counterparts, sampled women had about one less paper accepted for publication during their doctoral studies and took about half a year longer to finish their PhD training. Negative binomial regression models provide insights on the observed differences in women’s and men’s PhD performance. Results indicate that the correlates of publication productivity and time to PhD completion are very similar for women and men, but some gender-based differences are observed. For publication output, we find that good supervision had a stronger impact for men than women; and getting married during the PhD reduced women’s publication productivity but increased that of men. Becoming a parent during the PhD training was a key reason that women took longer to complete the PhD, according to our results. Findings suggest that having a female supervisor, attending an institution with gender policies in place, and pursuing the PhD in a department where sexual harassment by faculty was perceived as uncommon were enabling factors for women’s timely completion of their doctoral studies. Two priority interventions emerge from this study: (1) family-friendly policies and facilities that are supportive of women’s roles as wives and mothers and (2) fostering broader linkages and networks for women in STEM, including ensuring mentoring and supervisory support that is tailored to their specific needs and circumstances.

Gender disparities in fear of failure among 15-year-old students: The role of gender inequality, the organisation of schooling and economic conditions

INTRODUCTION

Prior research indicates that female students express higher fear of failure than male students and that fear of failure is associated with lower social and emotional well-being and higher levels of stress, anxiety, burnout and depression. Fear of failure also leads individuals to limit their choices and take fewer risks than would be warranted given their ability and context to minimise the possibility of failing.

METHODS

We examined cross-country differences in gender gaps in fear of failure as well as factors that explain gender gaps and variations of gender gaps across countries using multilevel modelling techniques. Participants were 517,047 15-year-old students from 59 countries who took part in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

RESULTS

Within countries, students with higher reading achievement and who lacked a growth mindset reported higher fear of failure. The gender gap in fear of failure was especially high among high-achieving students and students with high-achieving peers. The size of the gender gap in fear of failure differed across countries: it was higher in countries with higher levels of economic prosperity, with lower levels of societal-level gender inequality and countries with comprehensive education systems.

CONCLUSIONS

The greater prevalence of fear of failure among female students among high-achieving students attending high-achieving schools in prosperous and more gender equal societies could help to explain the paradox of the persistent underrepresentation of females in certain occupations in contexts that are most supportive of females.

Who’s writing open access (OA) articles? Characteristics of OA authors at Ph.D.-granting institutions in the United States

The open access (OA) publication movement aims to present research literature to the public at no cost and with no restrictions. While the democratization of access to scholarly literature is a primary focus of the movement, it remains unclear whether OA has uniformly democratized the corpus of freely available research, or whether authors who choose to publish in OA venues represent a particular subset of scholars—those with access to resources enabling them to afford article processing charges (APCs). We investigated the number of OA articles with article processing charges (APC OA) authored by 182,320 scholars with known demographic and institutional characteristics at American research universities across 11 broad fields of study. The results show, in general, that the likelihood for a scholar to author an APC OA article increases with male gender, employment at a prestigious institution (AAU member universities), association with a STEM discipline, greater federal research funding, and more advanced career stage (i.e., higher professorial rank). Participation in APC OA publishing appears to be skewed toward scholars with greater access to resources and job security.

Authorship in top-ranked mathematical and physical journals: Role of gender on self-perceptions and bibliographic evidence

Despite increasing rates of women researching in math-intensive fields, publications by female authors remain underrepresented. By analyzing millions of records from the dedicated bibliographic databases zbMATH, arXiv, and ADS, we unveil the chronological evolution of authorships by women in mathematics, physics, and astronomy. We observe a pronounced shortage of female authors in top-ranked journals, with quasistagnant figures in various distinguished periodicals in the first two disciplines and a significantly more equitable situation in the latter. Additionally, we provide an interactive open-access web interface to further examine the data. To address whether female scholars submit fewer articles for publication to relevant journals or whether they are consciously or unconsciously disadvantaged by the peer review system, we also study authors’ perceptions of their submission practices and analyze around 10,000 responses, collected as part of a recent global survey of scientists. Our analysis indicates that men and women perceive their submission practices to be similar, with no evidence that a significantly lower number of submissions by women is responsible for their underrepresentation in top-ranked journals. According to the self-reported responses, a larger number of articles submitted to prestigious venues correlates rather with aspects associated with pronounced research activity, a well-established network, and academic seniority.

Gender stereotypes can explain the gender-equality paradox

The so-called "gender-equality paradox" is the fact that gender segregation across occupations is more pronounced in more egalitarian and more developed countries. Some scholars have explained this paradox by the existence of deeply rooted or intrinsic gender differences in preferences that materialize more easily in countries where economic constraints are more limited. In line with a strand of research in sociology, we show instead that it can be explained by cross-country differences in essentialist gender norms regarding math aptitudes and appropriate occupational choices. To this aim, we propose a measure of the prevalence and extent of internalization of the stereotype that "math is not for girls" at the country level. This is done using individual-level data on the math attitudes of 300,000 15-y-old female and male students in 64 countries. The stereotype associating math to men is stronger in more egalitarian and developed countries. It is also strongly associated with various measures of female underrepresentation in math-intensive fields and can therefore entirely explain the gender-equality paradox. We suggest that economic development and gender equality in rights go hand-in-hand with a reshaping rather than a suppression of gender norms, with the emergence of new and more horizontal forms of social differentiation across genders.

On the relationship between supervisor–supervisee gender difference and scientific impact of doctoral dissertations: Evidence from Humanities and Social Sciences in China

This article explores the relationships between supervisor–supervisee gender difference and the scientific impact of doctoral dissertations. We use the China Doctoral Dissertations Full-text Database and pay special attention to the fields of Humanities and Social Sciences in China in our empirical study. By establishing regression models, we find that the ranks of the scientific impact regarding doctoral dissertations are female–female (first), female–male (second), male–male (third) and male–female (fourth) pairs (sequence: student gender and then supervisor gender). The finding has many interesting implications for science policy and gender inequality.

When Grades Are High but Self-Efficacy Is Low: Unpacking the Confidence Gap Between Girls and Boys in Mathematics

Girls have much lower mathematics self-efficacy than boys, a likely contributor to the underrepresentation of women in STEM. To help explain this gender confidence gap, we examined predictors of mathematics self-efficacy in a sample of 1,007 9th graders aged 13-18 years (54.2% girls). Participants completed a standardized math test, after which they rated three indices of mastery: an affective component (state self-esteem), a meta-cognitive component (self-enhancement), and their prior math grade. Despite having similar grades, girls reported lower mathematics self-efficacy and state self-esteem, and were less likely than boys to self-enhance in terms of performance. Multilevel multiple-group regression analyses showed that the affective mastery component explained girls' self-efficacy while cognitive self-enhancement explained boys'. Yet, a chi-square test showed that both constructs were equally relevant in the prediction of girls' and boys' self-efficacy. Measures of interpersonal sources of self-efficacy were not predictive of self-efficacy after taking the other dimensions into account. Results suggest that boys are advantaged in their development of mathematics self-efficacy beliefs, partly due to more positive feelings and more cognitive self-enhancement following test situations.