Women Underrepresentation in Editorial Boards of Geology Journals and the Utopia of Gender Equality

M H Henriques,L F Garcia

doi:10.3389/feart.2022.803900

Abstract

The 5th goal of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aims at promoting gender equality and empowering all women and girls at all levels of decision making. This includes editorial decisions in the frame of the dissemination of scientific knowledge as a result of research and development activities. This work analyses the women representation in the editorial boards of 53 subscription or open access geology journals of all quartile rankings included in the Web of Science Core Collection™ in 2020 in order to assess how far female geoscientists are from the 2030 Agenda targets concerning gender equality. Among the analyzed journals, in 85% the position of editor(s)-in-chief is (are) occupied by a man or a group of men, and in the remaining 15% by women. Moreover, 80% of the people that make up the editorial board of the same journals are men and 20% are women. Only one journal indicates the editor(s)-in-chief gender and the number of members per gender that make up the editorial board. The strong gender gap detected in this study shows that the goal of gender equality in the editorial boards of geological journals still remains a long way off, and publishers should therefore increase gender diversity in editorial teams and referee pools.

Highlights

The UNESCO Priority Gender Equality Action Plan for 2014–2021 acknowledges the lack of women’s leadership and the lack of women’s voice and participation in decision-making processes (UNESCO, 2014a)
For each of the analyzed journals, the editor(s)-in-chief gender and the number of members per gender that make up the editorial board by quartile ranking were determined
It can be said that the underrepresentation of women in geology extends to specific aspects of scientific activity such as editorial activities whether as members of editorial boards or as editors-in-chief, and regardless the typology of access and quartile ranking of the analyzed journals

Summary

Introduction

The UNESCO Priority Gender Equality Action Plan for 2014–2021 acknowledges the lack of women’s leadership and the lack of women’s voice and participation in decision-making processes (UNESCO, 2014a). A recent historic analysis of gender bias in science careers across countries and disciplines shows that men and women publish at a comparable yearly rate and have an equivalent career impact for the same volume of work (Huanga et al, 2020). As reported by Aladro Vico et al (2014), based on analyses of science news articles published by five major general-interest paid-for Spanish newspapers over a six-month period, the image of female scientists presented by the media reveals a significant level of informative inequality in favor of male scientists, both in terms of the number of science news articles dedicated to them and in terms of treatment. Despite the recognition of images of female scientists and engineers in professional positions of high prestige, the study developed by Steinke (2005) about cultural representations of gender images of female scientists and engineers in popular films from 1991 to 2001, suggests that depictions of female scientists and engineers in these films often emphasized their appearance and focused on romance; they report that among images of female scientists and engineers interacting with male colleagues overt and subtle forms of stereotyping were used to undermine and reinforce traditional social and cultural preconceptions about the role of women in science and technology

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Discussion

Conclusion