Narrowing gender gap in the research on echinococcosis and editorial contribution of women in parasitology journals.

Abstract

Gender equity and authorship diversity are believed to be the essential parts of building a dynamic scientific atmosphere. The purpose of the present study was to determine the status of gender equity in research on echinococcosis and the editorial diversity in major parasitology journals over the past four decades. All articles were retrieved from major databases from the years 1980, 2000, 2010, 2015, and 2020. Journals belonging to the four quartiles of parasitology journals listed in the Journal Citation Report were selected, and the gender and region of each editorial member were identified. Among the 3583 first authors of the articles published in all selected years, 2236 (62.4%) were men, whereas 1040 (29%) were women. There was a significant increase in women's contributions as the first author, from 6.8% in 1980 to 35.8% in 2020 (P < .001). A greater gender gap was found for the senior authors, showing 2391 (66.7%) men and 837 (23.4%) women. The gender gap has been narrowed in most of the six regions of the world, particularly for the Western Pacific region, where the gender inequity had almost diminished in 2020; i.e. the man-woman ratios of the first and last authors from this region were 2.25 and 1.75 in 1980, reaching 1.04 and 0.97, in 2020, respectively. Our findings also indicated that articles authored by men received 2.5 to 3.1 times more citations than women authors. Gender distribution of the editors-in-chief, associate editors, and editorial board members across all quartiles showed that 78.7%, 69.5%, and 72.7% were men, respectively, and mostly affiliated with the European and American regions. Findings of the present study showed that gender inequity is still present and women researchers continue to be the minority in the field of parasitology, particularly in the research on echinococcosis.