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Superior accomplishments and considerations of gender equity in academy membership might be contributing to the difference.
Since 2019, 40% of new members of two US academies have been women.Credit: Getty
Female researchers in mathematics, psychology and economics are 3–15 times more likely to be elected as members of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) or the American Academy of Arts and Sciences than are male counterparts who have similar publication and citation records, a study finds.
The paper finds that since 2019, female researchers have comprised around 40% of new members in both prestigious academies1. Historically, across disciplines in each academy, there have been substantially fewer female researchers than male ones. Before the 1980s, female members comprised less than 10% of total academy membership across all scientific fields.
The NAS advises the nation on science and technology matters, whereas the American Academy honours research excellence. Election to the academies is considered one of the highest honours a researcher can receive.
Lead author David Card, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, says that the boost does not seem to be due to an analogous increase in the number of potentially qualified female candidates for membership.
In a statement to Nature, NAS president Marcia McNutt says that the NAS does not reserve a set number of places in each year’s election for female scientists or other under-represented researchers. Instead, she says that reforms to the NAS-membership nomination process have encouraged inclusion of a more-diverse group of scientists.
David Oxtoby, president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, told Nature that female academy membership has risen from 44% to as much as 55% of all members in certain disciplines since 2018. He did not give a reason for the increase.
Julia Lane, an economist at New York University who studies female representation in science, points out that the study assumes that male and female academy members face the same hurdles in getting published and cited. However, Lane says, research — including her own2 — shows that women face greater barriers in scientific enterprise than do their male counterparts and are less likely to receive credit for their work. This finding suggests that the boost in female academy members could be a result of survivorship bias — women who make it to the top of their field and into the pool of academy candidates are probably more accomplished than male candidates.
Card acknowledges that the study does not examine accomplishments beyond publications and citations, such as mentoring experience or journal editorships, that could help to set female scholars apart. It’s possible, he says, that consideration for academy membership might now account for these roles, resulting in the increase in female membership. “If you control for publications and citations, women are a little bit more likely to be brought in in all three fields” of maths, economics and psychology, says Card. However, he adds, it’s clear that the academies are pushing for more gender equality in nominations.
