WOMEN PARTICIPATION IN HERPETOLOGY: A SCIENTOMETRIC ANALYSIS

ROSIO SCHNEIDER; JIMENA GROSSO; JESSICA FRATANI; GABRIELA FONTANARROSA; ANA SOFIA DUPORT BRU; DAIANA FERRARO; MARIA JOSE SALICA; MARIANA CHULIVER PEREYRA; NATALIN VICENTE; DOLORES CASAGRANDA; MIRIAM VERA; ROMINA SEHMAN; REGINA MEDINA; LAURA PEREYRA; CARLA BESSA

Congreso; I 1st Congress of Women in Bioinformatics and Data Science Latin America; 2020

In the last decades, women´s participation in science has increased significantly, even reaching apparent parity in some countries such as Argentina. However, measuring gender bias is a complex subject and when digging deeply into scientometric parameters, gender inequalities become evident. In this work, we analyzed women´s representativity and visibility in Herpetology, the scientific study of reptiles and amphibians. We examined around 7000 records about three aspects of academic participation: (i) articles authorship in Journals from four quartiles according to the SCImago rank, and a non-ranked journal, (ii) participation as chairs and editorial boards in herpetological journals, and (iii) participation in scientific societies and meetings. We used descriptive statistics and network analyses. Our results showed that women represented 30.3% of all authors in journals of herpetology, holding the position of last author -a position usually occupied by lab-leaders- in just one of four articles. Female representation in editorial boards was only 19%. The co-authorship networks analyses carried out for two South American journals (Cuadernos de Herpetología and South American Journal of Herpetology) showed that female authors were below equal representation (46.8% and 36.2%, respectively) and the gender of the first author had a significant influence on the number of female authors. Further, although female members of the Argentine Association of Herpetology are the majority, only one woman has presided over the society in its 38 years of existence. In the annual congresses organized by this association, women had equalparticipation than men but were 2.4 times less invited than them to speak in main conferences. These results show the underrepresentation of women in leadership and decision-making positions in Herpetology, in congruence with what is observed in other scientific areas. A correct understanding of the gender inequalities inside specific scientific areas is necessary to propose actions and policies directed to overcome the inequalities.