Admin_Adham
Jump to Key Points The gender gap in research publishing is narrowing, but the proportion of women researchers remains low in many countries, territories, and fields. A recent analysis by the Nature Index examined female first authorship and last authorship to assess how female representation has changed over the past decade.
The analysis examined first and last author positions in the natural and health sciences and found that gender gaps in these positions had hardly changed over the past decade, despite an overall increase in women’s participation in science. In the natural sciences, women accounted for 29% of first female authorships and 17% of last authorships in 2025 compared with 28% and 15%, respectively, in 2015.
These findings are consistent with evidence from other studies showing that greater participation in science does not necessarily translate into equal representation throughout academic careers.
A comprehensive analysis of scholarly contributions from 2003 to 2022 published in the Journal of Informetrics revealed positive trends toward gender equity and growing diversity in academic authorship. However, it also reported slightly lower productivity among women, greater international collaboration, a higher proportion of publications in the first quartile, and a higher overall scientific impact.
- Female first authorship ↑ modestly; senior/last authorship remains low.
- Natural sciences: women 29% first authorships, 17% last authorships in 2025.
- 2015→2025 change minimal: first 28%→29%; last 15%→17%.
- Biology shows higher female representation than chemistry/physical sciences.
- Peer review times for female-authored articles were 7.4%-14.6% longer.
Gender differences were also reported in the peer review process. A 2026 study published in PLOS Biology analyzed more than 36.5 million biomedical and life sciences articles indexed in PubMed. Median peer review times were 7.4%-14.6% longer for female-authored articles than for male-authored articles, depending on the author’s position and gender composition of the research team. The differences remained significant after adjusting for several factors and were observed across most disciplines, although the gap was absent or reversed in some fields.
Differences by Field
The analysis also found variations in female representation across research fields and author positions.
In the natural sciences, women accounted for 29% of first authorships and 17% of last authorships in 2025 compared with 28% and 15%, respectively, in 2015. First authorship is often associated with researchers at earlier career stages, whereas last authorship typically indicates a senior researcher or principal investigator.
The analysis also examined representation by subject area, research topic, and journal. Nature Communications, which had 4860 authorships for which gender could be inferred in 2025, increased the percentage of female first authorships from 27% in 2015 to 34% in 2025. The 7-percentage-point increase was the largest among the 10 journals with the highest number of first authorships analyzed. Science Advances also recorded a 7-percentage-point increase in female first authorship during the same period.
PLOS Genetics and Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, each reached 50% female first authorships in 2025, although they had substantially fewer authorships than the journals in the first group. Overall, female representation was higher in the biological sciences than in chemistry or the physical sciences.
Comparisons between journals were also affected by year-to-year variation in the number of articles included in the analysis. In some journals, this resulted in substantial differences in the number of authorships analyzed between 2015 and 2025, making comparisons of female authorship ratios more difficult.
The study had an important limitation: Gender was inferred from authors’ names using an algorithm rather than from information provided by the authors themselves. The dataset included only the binary categories of male and female and had uneven exclusion rates for some countries and territories, including China.
Overall, the findings showed uneven progress. Although women’s representation in scientific authorship has increased, their advancement into positions typically associated with greater seniority or leadership has progressed more slowly.
This article was translated from El Médico Interactivo on Univadis, part of the Medscape Professional Network.
