Gender differences in performance of top cited scientists by field and country
- PDF / 3,996,586 Bytes
- 27 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 8 Downloads / 129 Views
Gender differences in performance of top cited scientists by field and country Ho Fai Chan1,2 · Benno Torgler1,2,3 Received: 21 April 2020 © Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary 2020
Abstract In this descriptive study, we aim to show the potential gender differences in academic success, focusing on the top (i.e., most frequently cited) scientists by analyzing the work of more than 94,000 scientists in 21 fields across 43 countries. Our results indicate that female representation in the top tier of scientists strongly varies between countries (11.83%; s.d. = 0.046), with the highest proportion of top women scientists in Finland (20.45%) and the lowest in Saudi Arabia (2.08%). Compared with the total share of females in science, women are underrepresented among the top (i.e., most frequently cited) scholars by 28.52 percentage points. The proportions differ by disciplines, with top women authors best represented in Public Health and Services (36.1%), Communication and Textual Studies (33.7%), Psychology and Cognitive Science (27.5%), and Social Sciences (23%); while the lowest share of women scientists are found in Mathematics and Statistics (6.3%), Engineering (7.2%), and Physics and Astronomy (7.7%). However, despite the low female representation, top women scholars in those three fields conduct (on average) more impactful research than their male colleagues, which is contrary to most other research fields. We also show that female scientific success is positively correlated with a nation’s higher gender equity indicators, lower discriminatory values, and less negative attitudes and preferences towards women. Overall, our findings suggest that scientific fields are still struggling with gender inequality that pervades public life. Keywords Gender · Gender representation · Gender equality · Science · Top scientists Ho Fai Chan and Benno Torgler have contributed equally to this work. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1119 2-020-03733-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Ho Fai Chan [email protected] * Benno Torgler [email protected] 1
School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
2
Centre for Behavioural Economics, Society and Technology, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
3
CREMA – Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts, 8008 Zurich, Switzerland
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Scientometrics
Introduction Research regarding women in science has received substantial attention since the 1980s, motivated by inequality and occupational segregation concerns. This exploration has provided valuable insights on many aspects of women scientists’ career development (e.g., Xie et al. 2003). In 1980, the Congress of the United States passed the Women in Science and Technology Equal Opportunity Act (Handelsman et al. 2005). Bentley and Adamson (2003) prepared a report for the National Science Foundation that reviews the literat
Data Loading...
