Female researchers in Russia: have they become more visible?

Abstract

This study is based on the fact that the surnames of many Russian scientists have gender endings, with ''a'' denoting a female, so that the sex of most of them can be readily determined from the listing of authors in the Web of Science (WoS). A comparison was made between the proportion of females in 1985, 1995, and 2005, with a corresponding analysis of the major fields in which they worked, their propensity to co-author papers internationally (which often necessitates having the opportunity to travel to conferences abroad to meet possible colleagues), and their citation records. We found, as expected, that women had a higher presence in the biological sciences and a very low presence in engineering, mathematics, and physics. Their citation scores, on a fractionated basis, were lower than those for men in almost all fields and years, and were not explained by their writing of fewer reviews and papers in English (both of which lead to higher citations), or their lower amount of international collaboration in 1995 and 2005 after Russia had become a more open society.

Forty years of gender disparities in Russian science: a historical bibliometric analysis

“…Whereas Lewison and Markusova (2011) provided evidence of a gender gap in Russia, based on bibliometric data for three non-consecutive years (1985, 1995 and 2005), the present article proposes to corroborate these results and study the situation over a larger time window, with data from 1973 to 2012. More specifically, this paper assesses the place of women in the Russian scientific research system in the various disciplines and how this position has evolved during the last forty years in terms of their proportion of the published research output, research productivity, international and national collaboration and scientific impact.…”

“…Even when girls study sciences, they remain underrepresented in professions of the science fields with only 43 % of female science graduates working as professionals in Physics, Mathematics and Engineering, as opposed to 71 % of male graduates (OECD 2013). Women underrepresentation in science has recently been documented in the United States (Larivière et al 2013), in Québec (Larivière et al 2011), in Russia (Lewison and Markusova 2011), in Poland (Suchanska and Czerwosz 2013), in Italy (Abramo et al 2009), andin France (De Cheveigné 2009). This study thus seeks to describe the evolution of female researchers' position in the specific case of Russia.…”

“…Russian science survived in large part through the financial support of international funding-such as that provided by the Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros or European Union programs (e.g., INTAS). In these conditions, many male researchers left Russia or changed careers, leaving more positions for women in scientific research (Lewison and Markusova 2011). Moreover, the demilitarization reform initiated in 1992 resulted in the layoff of a significant proportion of Russian scientists.…”

Gender Representation in Russian Academic Journals

“…This may influence gender representation in publications. For example, Grant Lewison and Markusova (2011) compared the proportion of men and women in the list of the authors of the Web of Science in 1985Science in , 1995Science in , and 2005. The data showed that women trailed men in all scientific fields in terms of output, from about 10 % in mathematics to about 40 % in clinical medicine and biology.…”

“…In the past decade, much research on Russian gender representation in academic publications has focused on wide usage of international databases and international citation indexes (Wilson, Markusova 2004;Markusova et al 2009;Pislyakov, Dyachenko 2010;Lewison, Markusova 2011;Paul-Hus et al 2015). The specificity of international databases is that they mostly include publications from natural sciences and engineering, rather than social science and humanities articles.…”