Abstract
Although gender parity has been reached at the graduate level in the
geosciences, women remain a minority in top-level positions. First
authorship of peer-reviewed scholarship is a measure of academic success
and is often used to project potential in the hiring process.
Given the importance of first author publications for hiring and
advancement, we sought to quantify whether women are underrepresented as
first authors relative to their representation in the field. We compiled
first author names across 13 leading geoscience journals from January
2013 to April 2019 (n = 35,183). Using a database of 216,286 names from
79 countries, across 89 languages, we classified the likely gender
associated with each author’s given (first) name. We also estimated the
gender distribution of authors who publish using only initials, which
may itself be a strategy employed by some women to preempt perceived
(and actual) gender bias in the publication process. Female-author names
represent 13-30% of all first authors in our database, and are
significantly underrepresented relative to the proportion of women in
early career positions (30-50%). The proportion of female-name first
authors varies significantly by subfield, reflecting variation in
representation of women across subdisciplines. In geoscience, the
quantification of this first authorship gender gap supports the
hypothesis that the publication process – namely, achievement or
allocation of first authorship – is biased by social factors, which may
modulate career success of women in the sciences.