Women and the Global South are strikingly under-represented as top authors

By Richard B. Primack

“Regard not your past failures nor successes.  All the past is equally a failure & a success.  It is a success in as much as it offers you the present opportunity.” 

- Henry David Thoreau in his Journal.
 

 

A new study examined the gender and affiliations of 1051 top-authors, those scientists with the most publications in 13 leading ecology and conservation journals. Women and the Global South are barely represented on this list. The overall list of top authors included only 11% women, while 75% of the articles were from authors in just five countries in the Global North. This massive imbalance in scientific authorship is extremely concerning, especially in the field of ecology and conservation, where diverse perspectives are needed to address global climate and environmental challenges.

Diverse perspectives foster scientific innovation in ecology and conservation (© Bea Maas)

Analysed trends over different time periods showed that the proportion of top female authors increased from 3% to 18% between 1945 and 2019, and authors from  the Global South also increased.

 

The lack of representation of women and the Global South affects not only top authorship in ecology, but also scientific leadership.

Global distribution of top authors in ecology and conservation (© Maas et al., 2021, Cons.Lett.)

 

The study provides specific recommendations to promote scientific diversity:

 

First, scientific journals and societies should make special efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in leadership recruitment. Second, the trajectory of a scientific career should be evaluated based on diverse competencies beyond publication outputs. Third, structural changes are needed to promote parenting time and diversity among staff, collaborators and co-authors and protect the integrity of scientific communities.

 

Publication in "Conservation Letters": Bea Maas, Robin J Pakeman, Laurent Godet, Linnea Smith, Vincent Devictor and Richard Primack (2021). Women and Global South strikingly under-represented among top-publishing ecologists. Conservation Letters, in press.