A study confirms that women are “oppressed” in scientific production worldwide | Glass

A scientific study revealed that women working in the field of research and science are not credited for the research they do and do not receive authorship rights in the research they contribute compared to men. The magazine has long exposed the fact that women are undervalued for their work in science.

A study published in Prestigious scientific journal “Nature”.June 2022—indicates that women are underrepresented in science than men, and there is a documented gap between the number of works produced by women and men in science.

The study found that at least part of this gap is a result of women’s unrecognized contributions, and that women in research groups are less likely than men to be awarded faculty credit.

According to a study conducted by researchers at Ohio State University, these differences can cause difficulties in attracting women to science.

Confirmed numbers show that women are exposed to injustice

Researchers in the study analyzed a large set of administrative data from universities linked to patents and articles published in scientific journals. Learn in-depth information about research programs from 53 colleges and universities between 2013 and 2016.

The researchers analyzed data from more than 125,000 people who participated in nearly 10,000 research groups, examining the contributions of people in senior roles, including faculty members, graduate students and others. All these data were analyzed to find out who participated in these research projects and whether some of them were left out of the final research output.

The results of the study showed that women were 13% less likely to be credited as a named author on research publications compared to their male colleagues. Women are also less likely to be teachers, regardless of their seniority.

The gap is most evident in early professional roles, with only 15% of female graduate students named as faculty in research publications, compared to 21% of male students. The research found that women were 59% less likely than men to be named in patents for projects that everyone worked on.

“Women are not authorizing scientific articles at the same rate as men,” Enrico Berks, a postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State University, tells Technology Networks. “The gap is stable and robust.”

Another study of 2,660 scientists, cited by the authors of the recent study, confirmed their findings regarding the recognition of scientific contributions, as exclusion from authorship was common and varied greatly by gender, with 42.95% women and 37.81% women. % of men reported that they were excluded from the author.

Less welcoming work environments

Research has indicated that women are less productive because they work in less welcoming work environments, have more family responsibilities, are assigned different positions in the lab, or differ in the type of supervision they are given.

Another reason why women are less likely to be credited for their research is that their work is often unknown, undervalued, or ignored.

The results of the study show that women are not less productive, but their work is not given real value, and in research groups in which women participate, women are given less credibility than men, and therefore they are systematically underrepresented. Authors must be named on articles and patents.

Discrimination in all sectors

The study found that the gender gap in teaching exists in most science fields and at almost all career levels, with female-dominated fields such as health and engineering being less likely to hold faculty positions. Where they are a minority.

On the other hand, women are less likely to be credited in so-called “high-impact” journals of high quality and widely cited.

Rosalind Franklin

According to the same study, the possibility that women receive less recognition for their scientific contributions is not hypothetical, an example of which is the case of Rosalind Franklin, one of the most famous examples of women not receiving credit for their science. Contributions.

Forbes says (Forbes) Franklin, a British chemist whose X-ray studies were instrumental in revealing the double helix structure of DNA, however, two molecular biologists, Francis Crick and James Watson, helped develop it without her knowledge of Franklin’s unpublished data. DNA model was their famous nuclear project, for which they won the Nobel Prize.

According to the study, Franklin’s major contribution to the discovery of the structure of DNA was initially unrecognized, and shortly after his death, the scientific community realized that he had been wrongly denied authorship of Crick and Watson’s original paper.

Only Franklin’s contributions were recognized because Watson’s interpretation of the discovery was so wrong. Research evidence indicates that Franklin was not the only or only woman to receive credit for her work.