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 ANDRÉS; NÚÑEZ MONTELLANO, GABRIELA; LOMÁSCOLO, SILVIA B.; NOVILLO, AGUSTINA; FRATANI, JESSICA; PLAZA BEHR, MAIA; ALVAREZ, MARISA; CASAGRANDA, ELVIRA; CHIAPPERO, FERNANDA; CHILLO, VERÓNICA; COCIMANO, ALEJANDRA; D´HIRIART, SOFIA; D´ALMEIDA, ROMINA; FANJUL, ELISA; FASOLA, LAURA; FERNANDEZ, ROMINA; GALLEGOS SÁNCHEZ, SILVANA; LORENZO PISARELLO, MARÍA JOSÉ; MARTINEZ GALVEZ, FERNANDA; MOLINERI, CARLOS; MONMANY GARZIA, A. CAROLINA; NANNI, SOFÍA; OVEJERO, RAMIRO; PERO, EDGARDO; RODRÍGUEZ, DANIELA; RUSSO, CANDELA; SANDOVAL SALINAS, MARIA; SCHROEDER, NATALIA; VALOY, MARIANA; REYNAGA, MARIA CELINA; RAMIREZ MEJÍA, ANDRÉS; PIQUER-RODRIGUEZ, 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 careeradvancement depending exclusively on individual talent and effort. Nevertheless, countless studies havedocumented 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 STEMdisciplines. Mining into the structure of scientific co-authorship publications, in this contribution wedeveloped a women contribution index pondering the gender-based individual contribution (ie., meritwithin a paper) using the allocation in co-authorship rank. We surveyed articles of the Top ranked journalEcology from 1999 to 2021. We compared the measured women contribution index vs what was expectedin a non-gender biased scenario. We found that overall, women account for 30% of authors, yet theircontribution is higher than expected by chance (i.e., over-contribution). Moreover, in multi-authoredpapers, the probability of not having a female co-author is higher than not having a male co-author. Weobserved 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 ofgender biased drop-out rates and its counterpart, over-compensation. This implies dealing with open orimplicit biases pointing at the few women publishing in Ecology not only achieving the meritsaccomplished by their male peers, but also surpassing them.