In Spain, the number of women researchers has equaled that of men in the generation that began their careers in the last decade. But inequality persists in the elite, made up of scientists whose works are most cited by other researchers.
According to data provided to La Vanguardia by John Ioannidis, a researcher at Stanford University (USA) who has analyzed gender inequality in scientific publications on a global scale, in Spain 50.5% of the people who have published their first scientific work after 2012 are women.
The data contrasts with that of the generation of researchers who published their first work before 1992, in which there were more than twice as many men as women. Since then, there has been a progressive reduction in the gender gap in scientific publications until reaching current equality.
In Spain, among people who published their first work before 1992, 31.4% were women. The percentage increased to 40.6% among those who began publishing between 1992 and 2001. And to 48% among those who did so in the following decade.
However, “women in Spain continue to be underrepresented among the most cited authors” in scientific publications, points out Ioannidis.
If we analyze the Spanish researchers who are in the 2% most cited in the world, there are almost twice as many men as women in the youngest generation, those who have published their first work after 2012. The figure reflects that the gender gap gender has been reduced compared to previous generations but is far from being closed.
Even so, Spain is progressing towards gender equality faster than the world average in the field of most cited researchers. It came from further back, since only 9.2% of the most cited scientists in Spain were women in the generation that began publishing before 1992, compared to 11.0% on the world average. And it has gone ahead, with 36.1% for Spain in the youngest generation, compared to 31.1% for the world as a whole.
During this transition towards equality, it has become normal for senior scientific management positions to be held by women. Prominent examples include molecular biologist María Blasco, director of the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) in Madrid since 2011; the physicist Caterina Biscari, director of the ALBA synchrotron in Cerdanyola del Vallès since 2012; paleoanthropologist María Martinón Torres, director of the National Center for Research on Human Evolution (CENIEH) in Burgos since 2017; the political scientist Eloísa del Pino, president of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) since 2022; or the archaeologist Marina Mosquera, director of the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) in Tarragona since 2024.
“There have been important corrections of the gender imbalance over time” on a global scale, Ioannidis highlighted in a study published in November in Plos Biology in which he presented the results of his analysis and did not detail the specific data from Spain. But “these corrections vary widely between countries.”
Among the 53 countries analyzed, Spain is one of the eleven where, in the younger generation, the number of women who publish research is greater than that of men.
Ioannidis highlights the cases of Finland and Argentina, which have achieved parity in the total number of publications like Spain, but which have a much greater disparity between the authors of the most cited works. When the 2% most cited publications are taken into account, the countries with the worst results in terms of gender equality are India, Colombia, Pakistan, Argentina, Finland and Japan.
The study was based on data from more than nine million researchers from 174 scientific disciplines. All researchers who have at least five scientific articles registered in the Scopus bibliometric database have been included in the analysis.
Gender inequality in science is not limited to publications, but includes other aspects such as hiring, promotion or access to funding, notes Ioannidis in Plos Biology. But “the most cited scientists are a select group, the most influential, and any gender bias in this group can have important repercussions on research in general. (…) There is still great room to correct imbalances.”
