Over-contribution of women in top-ranked journal publications reveals a new type of gender bias

FONTANARROSA, GABRIELA; ZARBÁ, LUCÍA; ASCHERO, VALERIA; DOS SANTOS, DANIEL A.; NÚÑEZ MONTELLANO, M. GABRIELA; LOMÁSCOLO, SILVIA B.; NOVILLO, AGUSTINA; PLAZA BEHR, MAIA; ÁLVAREZ, MARISA; CASAGRANDA, ELVIRA; CHIAPPERO, FERNANDA; CHILLO, VERÓNICA; COCIMANO, ALEJANDRA; D'HIRIART, SOFÍA; D'ALMEIDA, ROMINA; FANJUL, M. ELISA; FASOLA, LAURA; FERNÁNDEZ, ROMINA; GALLEGOS SÁNCHEZ, SILVANA; LORENZO PISARELLO, MARÍA JOSÉ; MARTÍNEZ GÁLVEZ, FERNANDA; MOLINERI, CARLOS; MONMANY GARZIA, CAROLINA; NANNI, SOFÍA; OVEJERO, RAMIRO; PERO, EDGARDO; RODRÍGUEZ, DANIELA; RUSSO, CANDELA; SANDOVAL SALINAS, MARÍA LEONOR; SCHROEDER, NATALIA; VALOY, MARIANA; REYNAGA, M. CELINA; RAMÍREZ MEJÍA, ANDRÉS; PIQUER-RODRÍGUEZ, MARÍA

Valencia

Congreso; Bridges between disciplines: Gender in STEM and Social Sciences; 2022

There is a generalized strong belief by which Academia is considered a meritocracy: a system of career advancement depending exclusively on individual talent and effort. Nevertheless, countless studies have documented differential barriers for women in science affecting productivity, impact and career length. Specifically, Ecology is one of the disciplines with major competition for tenured positions across STEM disciplines. Mining into the structure of scientific co-authorship publications, in this contribution we developed a women contribution index pondering the gender-based individual contribution (ie., merit within a paper) using the allocation in co-authorship rank. We surveyed articles of the Top ranked journal Ecology from 1999 to 2021. We compared the measured women contribution index vs what was expected in a non-gender biased scenario. We found that overall, women account for 30% of authors, yet their contribution is higher than expected by chance (i.e., over-contribution). Moreover, in multi-authored papers, the probability of not having a female co-author is higher than not having a male co-author. We observed an extreme gender-segregated pattern, with fewer female co-authors in men-led papers. We discuss the underlying process behind the observed female over-contribution patterns in terms of gender biased drop-out rates and its counterpart, over-compensation. This implies dealing with open or implicit biases pointing at the few women publishing in Ecology not only achieving the merits accomplished by their male peers, but also surpassing them.