Women Authors Research Articles

Women authors in the first 50years of DGE-contributions and research topics.

Wilhelm Roux promoted the newly emerged field of developmental mechanics by establishing the journal 'Archiv für Entwicklungsmechanik', currently known as 'Development, Genes and Evolution'. The founder and supporters of the journal were all men, as were the authors in the first 3years of the journal's existence. We therefore addressed the question-in what ways did women scientists contribute to this new research field and what impact did they have. By investigating the careers and research environment of women authors in the first 50years of the journal, we show that women contributed to all research areas of developmental mechanics and shaped its future direction.

Mind the Gap: On the Absence of Writing Women in German-Language Literature of the Czech Lands

The absence of female writing forms a particularly striking gap in the historiography of German-language literature in the Czech Lands during the decades around 1900. Women participated significantly in the literary scene of the period but were largely forgotten. Our article will discuss the conditions and discourses that enabled women to be active in the public space but later led to their absence in literary history. Approaches are sought that make future inclusion possible again. The first step for (re-)establishing a female presence in this area is to reconstruct biographies with a focus on female-specific social realities at the time and on the interaction of cultural, social and historical factors. In the next step, attention is brought to the “minor” or “simple”, rather non-canonical literary genres that were often used by women authors at the fin de siècle.

Black Women in Medical Education Publishing: Bibliometric and Testimonio Accounts Using Intersectionality Methodology.

Black women in academic medicine experience racial and gender discrimination, all while being tasked with improving a flawed system. Representation of Black women in medicine remains low, yet they bear the burden of fostering diversity and mentoring trainees, exacerbating their minority tax and emotional labor, and negatively impacting career progression. To complement qualitative accounts of Black women authors in the medical education literature with a quantitative account of their representation. We used statistical modeling to estimate the representation of Black women authors in medical education publishing as compared to other groups. An intersectional methodology employing bibliometric analysis and testimonio reflection. US-based authors of journal articles published in medical education journals between 2000 and 2020. Author race was determined using a probability-based algorithm incorporating US Census data, and author gender was ascribed using Social Security Administration records. We conducted two negative binomial generalized linear models by first and last author publications. Metadata for each article was retrieved from Web of Science and PubMed to include author names, country of institutional affiliation, and Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Results were contextualized via the "testimonio" account of a Black woman author. Of 21,945 unique authors, Black women (and other racially minoritized groups) published far fewer first and last author papers than white women and men. In addition, major MeSH terms used by Black women authors reveal little overlap with highly ranked medical education topics. The testimonio further narrated struggles with belonging and racial identity. This study revealed that Black women are underrepresented in medical education publishing. We believe that dismantling oppressive structures in the publishing ecosystem and the field is imperative for achieving equity. Additionally, further experiential accounts are needed to contextualize this quantitative account and understand underrepresentation in medical education publishing.

A 20-year analysis of gender trends in oncology authorship in the Cochrane database of systematic reviews.

The objective of this study was to evaluate global longitudinal publication trends in oncology in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) from 2001-2020. Retrospective bibliometric analysis. The primary outcome measures were the numbers and percentages of women as first, last, and corresponding author across all CDSR oncology publications. Additional outcomes included authorship differences between countries and percentages of women authors over time compared using the Cochran-Armitage trend test. In total, 548 articles were analyzed. Women were first authors in 52.26% (n=277) and corresponding authors in 50.75% (n=272), respectively. Women represented only 39.4% (n=210) of last authors, significantly less frequent than male counterparts (p < 0.001). The percentage of women last and corresponding authors has increased significantly in the past 20 years (p < 0.05). Countries such as the Netherlands and Australia consistently showed equitable representation in first, corresponding, and last authorship, while other countries such as Italy and China had uniformly low rates of female authorship. Our results highlight patterns of gender inequity in oncology publication authorship in the CDSR from 2001-2020 at a global level. Notably, women were less likely to serve in the last author position which, independent of assigned corresponding authorship, is generally assumed in academic oncology to designate the leader of a published study. Substantive efforts to correct this disparity are needed to achieve gender parity in publicly perceived leadership in oncology publications.

Navigating the changing landscape of transplant research: Trends, topics, and gender disparities

BackgroundTransplantation is a rapidly evolving field, reflecting advances in medical science and changing healthcare needs. This study aims to elucidate shifts in research focus over a decade, providing insights into emerging trends in transplant research. MethodsWe conducted a comprehensive analysis of 9,250 articles published in five high-impact transplant journals from 2012 to 2021. Article titles were processed to extract keywords using R Studio (v. 4.3.0). STATA 18 was used for t-tests and logistic regressions, with significance set at p ​< ​0.05. ResultsEmerging topics over the decade included outcomes and survival, surgical innovations, and lung transplantation. There was a downward trend in research on immunosuppression, genetics, and immunology. Over the decade, the odds of women's first authorship were higher for subjects such as public health, pediatric transplantation, infectious diseases, renal transplantation, and psychological aspects. Similarly, there were lower odds for women as first authors on surgical innovations, organ preservation, living donor transplantation, liver and lung transplantation, and multiorgan transplantation. Senior women authors had higher odds of publishing on the same topics as first author, plus immunology, kidney and heart transplantation. There were lower odds that a woman would be last author of regenerative medicine and xenotransplantation. Over the decade, there were higher odds of funding for research published on xenotransplantation, regenerative medicine, and immunology. Living donor, infectious diseases, and liver transplantation had lower odds of being funded over time. ConclusionThis cross-sectional study highlights the dynamic nature of transplant research, underscoring the importance of continuous observation of trends to anticipate future directions and needs in the field. The emergence of new focal areas, especially those related to technological advancements and social issues, reflects a broader trend in medical research responding to evolving challenges and opportunities. Notably, women's authorship was more prevalent in public health but less in surgical innovation. These insights can guide future research priorities, funding allocation, and clinical practices in transplantation.

The Influence of BookTok on Literary Criticisms and Diversity

BookTok, a TikTok community where creators discuss and review books, influences the publishing industry as books that gain popularity on TikTok have seen mainstream success. BookTok is believed to be a diverse space where stories about marginalized identities are celebrated. This is in opposition to the traditional publishing world that is dominated by White, heterosexual, cis-gendered men. However, despite misconceptions, online spaces are notably homogeneous, and TikTok does not appear to diverge from these patterns. By analyzing 55 TikTok videos collected from the BookTok community, this study analyzes the race, gender, and sexual orientation of TikTok creators, authors, and main characters of BookTok books. This article aims to understand the effects social media applications such as TikTok have on the publishing world and to understand BookTok’s relation to diversity. While there is more gender equity among the authors of BookTok than in the traditional publishing world, there continues to be a deficiency in the prevalence of marginalized authors on the platform. Although women creators and women authors are popular on the app, most of these women are White. In addition, the authors who are most discussed on BookTok do not typically include persons of color or members of the LGBTQ+ community. The tendency for authors to write about their own experiences results in there being few characters of color and few books about members of the LGBTQ+ community. Publishing houses should prioritize increased collaboration with authors of color and LGBTQ+ authors, while also using BookTok to promote and advertise their work.

A Womanist Study of Biliqisu Abubakar’s The Woman In Me

Northern Nigeria is today rife with spontaneous proliferous writing(s) by women authors, arising from the honed systemic patriarchy that relegates them to obedience, social and cultural subjugation, mental and emotional redundancy as well as denies them the space to productively be at par with their talents, giftings and abilities. This problem allows these teaming writers to question the social and cultural practices of the customs, beliefs, thoughts, and value systems of the society they represent, through their writings. It is on the premise of this background that this paper, deploys Womanism into Bilqisu Abubakar's The Woman in Me, to expose this systemic patriarchal hold on the women and shade light on the Womanist strand of feminism as Africa’s perception to what Feminism is to the West. In light of the foregoing, the paper finds that the phenomenon of culture and religion (in all forms), can negatively reconfigure the livelihood of not just the Northern Nigerian woman, but the African woman at large, as well as denying her femininity the space to thrive. The paper thus, concludes by showing that contemporary female writers in Northern Nigeria are emerging and re-evaluating the nexus between them and the erstwhile systemic patriarchy with subtlety, yet firmness to air out their voices to the balanced and safe spaces Womanism, Motherism, Black feminism, African feminism, and the like offer.

„Sempre s’è visto, e vede“

Abstract Against the background of epistemic change in the early modern period, the article examines the literary staging of experience in the epic works of Moderata Fonte (Tredici canti del Floridoro, 1581), Margherita Sarrocchi (La Scanderbeide, 1623) and Lucrezia Marinella (L’Enrico, ovvero Bisanzio acquistato, 1635). With cross-references to Fonte’s and Marinella’s treatises on gender theory, the analysis of exemplary passages shows that the three women authors exploit the evidential quality of the agonistic scenes in their epic poems in order to rebalance the relationship between experience and habit in the context of gender issues. By doing so, they use evidentia (gr. enárgeia) in its entire spectrum as a rhetorical, epistemological, visual and also legally connoted dispositive.

Einleitung: Gewohnheit, Erfahrung und die ‚schreibende Frau‘

Abstract This introduction summarizes some of the main hypotheses that underly the contributions of this thematic issue of ARTES which is dedicated to the role of habit/custom and experience in the writing of some Early Modern women authors. One hypothesis is that references to habit and experience may have supported Early Modern women writers in their efforts to legitimize their arguments, knowledge and writing, the reason for this being that – due to various social restrictions and expectations – women were often denied access to other fields of knowledge, especially that of so-called book knowledge. Hence, the question arises to what extent the references to habit/custom and experience are connected to the question of female education and female strategies of (self-)empowerment. I will illustrate this using the prominent example of the medieval writer Christine de Pizan. Since the specific nature of female claims can only be assessed against the background of male writing practices, I will also make some introductory remarks on habit/custom and experience with reference to Early Modern male authors.

Lucidity of Space and Gendered Performativity in Arabic Digital Literature

This article seeks to examine a new trend in Arabic women’s literature that not only aims to forge women’s communities but also creates resistance. Digital media is the mechanism that some Arab women authors employ to implement and foster a self-authority that acknowledges flexible identities in an age of revolutions and search for freedom. As a case study, I examine Ahlam Mosteghanemi’s Nessayne com and Rajaa Alsanea’s novel Girls of Riyadh, which originally appearing as compendiums, and Ibrahim Alsaqir’s novel Girls of Riyadh: The Complete Picture that comes as a literary response to the resistance of cultural and gender establishments. I suggest that the digital realm provides an arena for women to resist oppressing social establishments and that literary works and digital practices like Alsanea’s create spaces of and for resistance. Moreover, Alsanea’s and Mosteghanemi’s works are committed to promoting change in Arab societies, bridging the public and the private sphere by means of digital content. Arab women writers’ sites and blogs address subjects that challenge prevalent gendered structures in the Arab world, deconstruct cultural norms, give visibility and focus on the implications of gender on memory, love, masculinity and femininity, and sexuality. They do so by employing chats as a narrative technique that engages readers and women’s communities in the characters’ experiences and thereby inviting them to participate in making their work a site of challenge to gender and cultural establishments. As Alsanea’s representations of women subjectivities are uncommon and her characters defy the notion of the universality of woman as a shared gender, they are prohibited, criticized, and challenged. Those who defy gender performativity, such as Alsanea and Mosteghanemi, enact feminist resistance. The study engages with MENA gender and masculinity literature. It is also informed by Judith Butler’s notion of performativity, the construction of gender, and the demystification of the universalistic notion of “woman”.

‘Die zweideutige Würde der Dichterin’: Literarische Selbstbehauptung um 1800 am Beispiel von Wilhelmine Müller, geb. Maisch

ABSTRACT During her lifetime, the now-forgotten author and editor of women’s almanacs Wilhelmine Müller, née Maisch (1767–1807), was the most published poet in pocketbooks and periodicals, especially from Southern Germany. Tracing Müller’s career, this article examines her strategies for asserting herself in the literary field around 1800. The pastor’s daughter, who came from a modest background, relied on male mentors to establish herself as a writer. To this end, Müller actively engaged in networking. She confidently displayed her affiliation with poetry circles in Stuttgart and Vienna and curated her public image, referring to her connections to the high nobility. Both in her poems and in her paratexts, Müller reflects on her agency and advocates for women’s rights to education and intellectuality. However, her self-presentation remains ambivalent: she strategically oscillates between self-confidence and humility to defend herself against prejudice and ‘gender censorship’.

Association of Double-Blind Reviews With Increases in Women as First Authors: An Initial Report From the Journal of Cardiac Failure

Introduction: Women continue to remain under-represented in academic publishing in cardiology. Some evidence suggests that double-blind peer reviews may mitigate the impact of gender bias. In July 2021, the Journal of Cardiac Failure implemented a process for the conduct of double-blind reviews after previously utilizing single-blind reviews with the aim of improving author diversity. The purpose of the current manuscript was to examine the association between changes in authorship characteristics and implementation of double-blind reviews. Methods: Manuscripts were stratified into 3 eras: March – September 2021 (Era 1 – prior to double blind reviews), March – September 2022 (Era 2), and March – September 2023 (Era 3). All article types except invited editorials were included. Data were abstracted, including names, genders, ranks, and discipline of first and senior authors. Results: A total of 310 manuscripts were included in the analysis. The proportion of women first authors increased from 24% in Era 1 to 34% in Era 2 to 39% in Era 3 while the percentage of women authors serving in a senior authorship role remained fairly stable over time around 21-22%. Even after adjusting for region, article type, first author discipline, and last author gender, there was an increase in female first author over time (p= 0.015). Manuscripts with a female senior author were significantly more likely to have a female first author. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that double-blind peer review may contribute to increased gender diversity of first authors and highlight areas for future improvement for JCF and academic publishing.

Women are under-represented in adaptation policy research and are more likely to emphasise justice topics

Abstract This paper is the first to analyse the role of women authors in fostering justice-relevant topics in climate adaptation research. As representation, citation and payment patterns remain gender-biased across scientific disciplines, we explore the case of climate science, particularly adaptation, as its most human-oriented facet. In climate research and policy, there has been a recent surge of interest in climate justice topics: mentions of justice have increased almost tenfold in IPCC Working Group 2 reports between the latest assessment cycles (AR5 and AR6). We conduct a systematic examination of the topic space in the adaptation policy scholarship. As it is a vast and rapidly growing field, we use topic modelling, an unsupervised machine learning method, to identify the literature on climate justice and related fields, as well as to examine the relationship between topic prevalence and the gender of the authors. We find climate change adaptation policy research to be male dominated, with women holding 38.8% of first and 28.8% of last authorships. However, we observe topic-specific variability, whereby the share of female authors is higher among publications on justice-relevant topics. Female authorship is highly linked to topics such as Community, Local Knowledge, and Governance, but less to Food Security and Climate Finance. Our findings corroborate the evidence that female authors play a significant role in advancing the research and dialogue on the relationship between climate change and areas that have meaningful impact on lives of women and other marginalised groups.

World Society, Women Authors, and the Expansion of Feminist, Gender, Sex, and Sexuality (FGSS) Research in Comparative Education, 1957–2010

World Society, Women Authors, and the Expansion of Feminist, Gender, Sex, and Sexuality (FGSS) Research in Comparative Education, 1957–2010

A Play to Be Read: Authorship as Marriage in Eliza Haywood’s A Wife to Be Lett (1723)

A Wife to Be Lett (1723), Eliza Haywood’s first original comedy, is often viewed as a casual early investment in drama more productively reoriented to novel writing. Taking a contrary view, this article shows how this early play is a sophisticated, self-reflective piece in which the author rehearses what became a recurrent motif in her writing: the unique hardships besetting women’s authorship. By drawing attention to the shared predicaments of wives and women writers, Haywood’s play offers a metaphoric figuration of the woman author as a wife, providing a twist to the common trope of the writer as prostitute. A Wife to Be Lett voiced a powerful criticism against the hypocrisy of a society that relied on women (as wives and writers) for the production and circulation of capital but obstructed their efforts to do so. The play’s radical depiction of women as figures of authority and social respectability in the twin markets of marriage and literature sheds light on the moderate success it had on the stage and its far longer afterlife in print.

Uncovering gaps in women's authorship: A big data analysis in academic surgery.

Women are underrepresented in surgical authorship. Using big data analyses, we aimed to investigate women's representation as first and last authors in surgical publications worldwide and identify underlying predictors. We retrieved eligible surgical journals using Scimago Journal & Country Rank 2021. We queried articles indexed in PubMed from selected journals published between January 2018 and April 2022. We used the EDirect tool to extract bibliometric data, including first and last authors' names, primary affiliation country, and publication year. Countries and dependent territories were classified following World Bank income levels and regions. Women's representation was predicted from forenames using the Gender-API software. Citations were included if gender accuracy was ≥80%. We analyzed 210,853 citations containing both first and last authors' forenames, representing 158 countries and 14 territories. Women constituted 23.8% (50,161/210,853) of the first and 14.7% (31,069/210,853) of the last authors. High-income economies had more women as first authors than other income categories (p<0.001), but fewer women as last authors than upper-middle- and lower-middle-income economies (p<0.001). The odds of the first author being a woman were more than three times higher when the last author was also a woman (OR 3.21, 95% CI 3.13-3.30) and vice versa (OR 3.25, 95% CI 3.16-3.34) after adjusting for income level and publication year. Women remain globally underrepresented in surgical authorship. Our findings urge concerted global efforts to overcome identified disparities.

Writing and righting disability representation: autoethnographic reflections

Limited literature is available from Arab women authors on the topic of disability, and even less interest is found when looking at the publishing industry. This autoethnographic paper examines the role of the publishing industry in promoting underrepresented voices and questions who determines which voices are important and deserving of publication. This article intends to highlight the obstacles that disabled scholars and individuals confront in the publishing sector by examining the author’s personal experience in publishing a hybrid memoir. Head Above Water: Reflections on Illness (2022, 2023, London and New York) explores themes of ableism, academia, and disability identity.

Self-Censorship or Irony? The Rhetoric of Silence in Rosalía de Castro’s “Las literatas”

This article studies the textual strategies used by Rosalía de Castro in “Las literatas” to denounce the structural and epistemic violence suffered by women writers and to defend their right to participate in the public sphere through literary activity. The text appears in a peculiar context, a year after street demonstrations by seminarians prevented the publication of another article of hers in the same Almanaque para la Juventud Elegante. This article, addressing the general theme of the silencing imposed on women, exposes their reaction to any kind of pressure: to continue writing and publishing. The splitting of the narratorial voice to show an excinded, dialogic and even incoherent or contradictory authorial self continues a tradition initiated by Romantic women authors to generate fissures in a model of femininity disciplined within the limits of the space assigned to them.

Resistance, Transformation, and Empowerment: The Development of Feminine Identities in Mokámbo, aromas de Libertad and Kanga, la tierra de los sueños by Victoria Evita Ika

Abstract: Equatoguinean female authors have experienced a sort of Boom in literary production in the 21st century. Although there is still a relatively small number of women authors, they have made a significant impact on the Equatoguinean literary scene. Victoria Evita Ika explores the complexity of the formation of the multifaceted identity of a contemporary African woman in her novels Mokámbo, aromas de libertad (2010) and Kanga, la tierra de los sueños (2016). This analysis aims to explore how these two novels transform the development of identities of the modern Equatoguinean woman through surviving horizontal violence into a call for resistance and change. Her ability to learn from her experiences leads to finding a voice of resistance which is analyzed through the lens of the postmodern concept of "radical Black subjectivity." The struggle to negotiate between victimization and activism in order to realize her dreams, challenges the protagonist to make difficult choices. Both novels champion the resilience of women in their ability to adapt to the constant challenges they face in modern day Equatorial Guinea. This flexibility in the spirit of women is the true success and what ultimately keeps hope alive for the future of Equatorial Guinea.

Writing Draupadi: Politics and Poetics of Myth in Modern South Asian Literature

Modern South Asian literature celebrates Draupadi as one of the key icons that helps explore the embedded tenets of thoughts about self, history, and polity. Human beings make meaning of their endeavours in the political setup of historical context by placing self-therein. Bengali novelist Mahasweta Devi (1926-2016), Oriya novelist Pratibha Ray (1943-), and Nepali novelist Neelam Karki (1975-) rewrite Draupadi’s myth from the Mahabharata in “Draupadi” (1978), Yajnaseni (1984), and Cheerharan [Disrobing] (2016) respectively. Each of the woman authors addresses the formation of a woman’s self at a particular historical juncture in their society. Devi’s rebel self emerges from prevailing discrimination in Bengali society where the Mundas were socially and politically pushed to the margin. Ray broadly reflects on the plight of women in her contemporary society where they have lost independence to the dictations of society upon their self as they have no freedom of choice. Narrated in an epistolatory form addressing Krishna as her spiritual companion, Ray’s Draupadi reveals the vibes of her inner heart and her intimate observations about the world and the people. In Karki’s Cheerharan, Draupadi organises a programme to bring four generations of women together: Satyavati from the first generation; Ambika and Ambalika from the second generation; Gandhari and Kunti from the third generation; and Draupadi, Ulupi, and Bhanumati from the fourth generation. Though each generation narrates its story to the audience in the programme, this study will focus on Draupadi’s narration only. Devi, Ray, and Karki employ Draupadi as one of the power narratives to explore a new meaning in the changing context of their society. The woman authors reframe Draupadi’s myth in different ways to suit the ethos of Bengal in the 1970s, Odisha in the late 1970s, and Nepal after the second people’s movement in 2006. Each author invents a unique way of framing the narrative to address the inequalities in power structures in their societies. This paper contextually reads the three texts to examine the goal of writing Draupadi in modern South Asian fiction.