On the Compliance of Women Engineers with a Gendered Scientific System

Abstract

There has been considerable effort in the last decade to increase the participation of women in engineering through various policies. However, there has been little empirical research on gender disparities in engineering which help underpin the effective preparation, co-ordination, and implementation of the science and technology (S&T) policies. This article aims to present a comprehensive gendered analysis of engineering publications across different specialties and provide a cross-gender analysis of research output and scientific impact of engineering researchers in academic, governmental, and industrial sectors. For this purpose, 679,338 engineering articles published from 2008 to 2013 are extracted from the Web of Science database and 974,837 authorships are analyzed. The structures of co-authorship collaboration networks in different engineering disciplines are examined, highlighting the role of female scientists in the diffusion of knowledge. The findings reveal that men dominate 80% of all the scientific production in engineering. Women engineers publish their papers in journals with higher Impact Factors than their male peers, but their work receives lower recognition (fewer citations) from the scientific community. Engineers-regardless of their gender-contribute to the reproduction of the male-dominated scientific structures through forming and repeating their collaborations predominantly with men. The results of this study call for integration of data driven gender-related policies in existing S&T discourse.

Fig 1. Share of different sectors (universities (U), governmental institutions (G), industry (I) and hospitals (H)) in authoring papers across various disciplines.

Fig 2. Share of female authorship in engineering specialties.

Fig 3. Share of female authorships by type of sector across different disciplines.

Fig 4. Share of female authorship in different sectors.

Fig 5. Degree centrality (A) and clustering coefficient (B) of female and male researchers across engineering specialties.

Fig 6. Productivity, degree centrality and clustering coefficient of female and male researchers across different sectors.

Fig 7. Share and average weight of FF, FM, and MM collaborations across engineering specialties.

Fig 8. Share (A), average productivity and degree centrality (B) of researchers of each gender who collaborated only with females, only with males, and with researchers of both gender.

Fig 9. Degree centrality distribution of female and male authors (left axis), and average number of female and male collaborators of female and male engineers (right axis).

Fig 10. Productivity (A) and degree centrality (B) of female and male collaborators of female and male engineers.

Fig 11. Visual presentation of co-authorship network in aerospace engineering (left), nuclear technology (middle), and industrial engineering (right).