February 11th - International Day of Women and Girls in Science

Tackling some of the greatest challenges of the Agenda for Sustainable Development - improving health - will rely on harnessing all talent. Diversity in research expands the pool of talented researchers, bringing in fresh perspectives, talent, and creativity. This International Day of Women and Girls in Science is a reminder that women and girls play a critical role in science and technology communities and that their participation should be strengthened.

Overall, women account for only one third of the world’s researchers

Women are typically given smaller research grants than their male colleagues and, while they represent 33.3% of all researchers, only 12% of members of national science academies are women.

In a recent study in Nature 2022, Women are shown to be credited less in science than men

Gender differences in observed scientific output are well-documented:

women both publish and patent less than men. 

Recent work has suggested that women are not less productive, but rather that their work is undervalued.

Part of this gap is the result of unacknowledged contributions: women in

research teams are significantly less likely than men to be credited with authorship.

The findings are consistent across three very different sources of data.

1. Large-scale administrative data on research teams, team scientific output and attribution of credit—show that women are significantly less likely to be named on a given article or patent produced by their team relative to their male peers

2. An extensive survey of authors—similarly shows that women’s scientific contributions are systematically less likely to be recognized

3. Qualitative responses—suggests that the reason that women are less likely to be credited is because their work is often not known, is not appreciated or is ignored.

For more info : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04966-w 

At least some of the observed gender gap in scientific output may be owing

not to differences in scientific contribution, but rather to differences in attribution.

It is time to close this gender gap and to strengthen the inclusion of more women in science and research.

#InternationalDayOfWomenAndGirlsInScience #GenderEquity #ClosingTheGenderGap #Science #Research #Innovation #WomenInScience