First Authorship Gender Gap in the Geosciences

Abstract

Although gender parity has been reached at the graduate level in the geosciences, women remain a minority in faculty positions. First authorship of peer‐reviewed scholarship is a measure of academic success and is often used to project potential in the hiring process. Given the importance of first author publications for hiring and advancement, we sought to quantify whether women are underrepresented as first authors relative to their representation in the field of geoscience. We compiled first author names across 13 leading geoscience journals from January 2013 to April 2019 (n = 35,183). Using a database of 216,286 names from 79 countries, across 89 languages, we classified the likely gender associated with each author's given (first) name. We also estimated the gender distribution of authors who publish using only initials, which may itself be a strategy employed by some women to preempt perceived (and actual) gender bias in the publication process. Female names represent 13–30% of all first authors in our database and are substantially underrepresented relative to the proportion of women in early career positions (30–50%). The proportion of female‐name first authors varies substantially by subfield, reflecting variation in representation of women across geoscience subdisciplines. In geoscience, the quantification of this first authorship gender gap supports the hypothesis that the publication process—namely, achievement or allocation of first authorship—is biased by social factors, which may modulate career success of women in the sciences.

Limited Progress in Improving Gender and Geographic Representation in Coral Reef Science

“…The disparity in gender representation in science is tied to systemic issues and inequalities ranging from subtle biases, microaggressions, and toxic workplace environments where raising evidence of diversity issues or discrimination can be perceived as an attack to more privileged (i.e., older, white men), to discouragement or limited access to higher education, unequal access to healthcare and financial independence, and differential family roles and expectations (Table 1; O'Brien and Hapgood, 2012;Silbiger and Stubler, 2019). These can lead to real consequences for underrepresented backgroundssuch as those from certain racial or ethnic groups, national origins, or women-including drop out or stagnation in career development, as most STEM fields report that entry representation is near equal but that diversity decreases with each stage of career progression (Pico et al, 2020). In addition to publication bias, these issues also limit academic success and professional advancement.…”

Trends in the Representation of Women Among US Geoscience Faculty From 1999 to 2020: The Long Road Toward Gender Parity

“…Recent research has considered the causes for inequities, including hierarchical cultures that enable harassment and bias (Marín-Spiotta et al, 2020) and hampers belonging (Cheryan et al, 2017), racism and sexism within academia (Bocher et al, 2020;Dutt, 2020;Ramos & Yi, 2020), inaccessibility of fieldwork (Morales et al, 2020), among other factors. Some factors are not specific to hiring, but relate to bias in other aspects of academic careers that are considered heavily in hiring such as publishing, grant awards, and speaking invitations (Bornmann et al, 2007;Ford et al, 2018;Pico et al, 2020). Many studies focus on the need for institutional change (Ahmed, 2012), and the fractionation factor provides a quantitative metric that can be used to assess institutional change.…”

Nonbinary Systems: Looking towards the future of gender equity in planetary science

“…For example, [5,6,7,8,9] analyze the diversity of NASA-funded spacecraft science mission teams. [10] quantifies gender discrepancies in first authorship. Another topic of focus is harassment in professional settings.…”

“…In the words of [3], "Gender is not a new area of study and gender inclusion is not a new problem." The field of gender studies has existed for decades, and disciplines related to planetary science and astrobiology 10 have been working to improve gender equity for years. However, rather than deferring to established and well-researched understandings of gender and its individual and structural manifestations, many planetary scientists have chosen to approach problems of gender inclusion without consulting either this work or the experts who conduct it.…”