Abstract
Current attempts to address the shortfall of female researchers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have not yet succeeded, despite other academic subjects having female majorities. This article investigates the extent to which gender disparities are subject-wide or nation-specific by a first-author gender comparison of 30 million articles from all 27 Scopus broad fields within the 31 countries with the most Scopus-indexed articles 2014–2018. The results show overall and geocultural patterns as well as individual national differences. Almost half of the subjects were always more male (seven; e.g., Mathematics) or always more female (six; e.g., Immunology & Microbiology) than the national average. A strong overall trend (Spearman correlation 0.546) is for countries with a higher proportion of female first-authored research to also have larger differences in gender disparities between fields (correlation 0.314 for gender ratios). This confirms the international gender equality paradox previously found for degree subject choices: Increased gender equality overall associates with moderately greater gender differentiation between subjects. This is consistent with previous United States-based claims that gender differences in academic careers are partly due to (socially constrained) gender differences in personal preferences. Radical solutions may therefore be needed for some STEM subjects to overcome gender disparities.
Highlights
The proportion of female researchers varies between fields
The shortage of female researchers in STEM subjects is a cause for national concern in many countries, leading to initiatives such as GENDER-NET in Europe (Puy Rodríguez & Pascual Pérez, 2015), ADVANCE in the United States, and Athena SWAN in the United Kingdom (Rosser, Barnard, et al, 2019) to redress the imbalance
The proportions of female first authors in each of the 27 subjects is similar between countries. This logically suggests that the main reason for the gender disparity differences between subjects is broad cultural and/or biological sex differences in preferences rather than national culture or politics
Summary
The proportion of female researchers varies between fields. In Europe, for example, women are more likely to be found in medical and social sciences, whereas men are more likely to be in engineering, technology and the natural sciences (European Commission, 2019; Leta & Lewison, 2003). An international comparison of the proportions of women in science and engineering careers in Europe found substantial differences, with female majorities in Lithuania, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Portugal, in comparison to only 25% in Hungary (Eurostat, 2019), suggesting that STEM gender effects vary substantially between countries, even within the relatively economically homogeneous continent of Europe. An international comparison of academic authorship has found substantial differences between countries in the proportion of female first-authored research, including within disciplines (Elsevier, 2017). There are high-profile national (e.g., Latimer, Cerise, et al, 2019) and international (UNESCO, 2019) initiatives to encourage women to choose scientific careers. All these need to understand the fundamental causes of gender disparities to succeed
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