Gender differences in animal cognition science

Abstract

Abstract Women’s representation in science is increasing steadily, with some fields closing gender parity in terms of participation and scientific output. Animal Cognition appears to fall into that category. However, a careful analysis of gender author balance in 600 animal cognition papers revealed some remaining disparities. Despite that female animal cognition scientists dominate first authorship positions, receive equal citations, and publish in equally high quality journals, they are still severely under-represented in positions of seniority. In addition, disparities remain at the group level, where all-female author teams are not only the minority in our dataset, but also seem to receive disproportionally less citations than all-male author teams, regardless the quality of the publications. We also found that female animal cognition scientists focus on different taxa, and tend to include study animals of both sexes more often than male scientists. Our study suggests that despite the meaningful contribution of female scientists to the field, Animal Cognition continues to be marred by gender biases.

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