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Gender and sex analysis is increasingly recognized as a key factor in creating better medical research and health care1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Using a sample of more than 1.5 million medical research papers, our study examined the potential link between women’s participation in medical science and attention to gender-related and sex-related factors in disease-specific research. Adjusting for variations across countries, disease topics and medical research areas, we compared the participation of women authors in studies that do and do not involve gender and sex analysis. Overall, our results show a robust positive correlation between women’s authorship and the likelihood of a study including gender and sex analysis. These findings corroborate discussions of how women’s participation in medical science links to research outcomes, and show the mutual benefits of promoting both the scientific advancement of women and the integration of gender and sex analysis into medical research.

Nielsen MW, Andersen JP, Schiebinger L, et al. (2017) One and a half million medical papers reveal a link between author gender and attention to gender and sex analysis. Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Publishing Group 1(11): 791–796.

It is often argued that female researchers publish on average less than male researchers do, but male and female authored papers have an equal impact. In this paper we try to better understand this phenomenon by (i) comparing the share of male and female researchers within different productivity classes, and (ii) by comparing productivity whereas controlling for a series of relevant covariates. The study is based on a disambiguated Swedish author dataset, consisting of 47,000 researchers and their WoS-publications during the period of 2008-2011 with citations until 2015. As the analysis shows, in order to have impact quantity does make a difference for male and female researchers alike—but women are vastly underrepresented in the group of most productive researchers. Wediscuss and test several possible explanations of this finding, using a data on personal characteristics from several Swedish universities. Gender differences in age, authorship position, and academic rank do explain quite a part of the productivity differences.

van den Besselaar P, Sandström U, Janssens F, et al. (2017) Vicious circles of gender bias, lower positions, and lower performance: Gender differences in scholarly productivity and impact. Dorta-González P (ed.), PLOS ONE, Springer 12(8): e0183301.

This report documents the third edition of the Gender Equality Index of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE). Since its launch in 2013, the Gender Equality Index has been recognised for its notable contribution to policy debates and increased awareness about gender equality at the EU and national levels.

The Index is a comprehensive measure for assessing the state of the art and monitoring progress in gender equality across the EU over time. The third edition provides scores for 2005, 2010, 2012 and 2015. It relies on a conceptual framework that embraces different theoretical approaches to gender equality and integrates key gender equality issues within the EU policy framework.

The Index measures gender gaps and takes into account the context and different levels of achievement of Member States within a range of relevant policy areas: work, money, knowledge, time, power and health. Additionally, it gives insights into violence against women and intersecting inequalities. It shows the different outcomes of EU and national policies for women and men and supports the development and implementation of evidence-based policymaking in the area of gender equality.