Quick Hit: Which academic disciplines have the most women authors?

Based on research from the University of Washington’s Eigenfactor Project, The Chronicle of Higher Education has put together a very cool interactive graphic displaying the gender distribution of academic authorship by discipline and era.

Women’s presence in higher education has increased, but as authors of scholarly papers—keys to career success—their publishing patterns differ from those of men. Explore nearly 1,800 fields and subfields, across four centuries, to see which areas have the most female authors and which have the fewest, in this exclusive Chronicle report. See how overall percentages differ from the important first-author position and—in two major bioscience fields—from the prestigious last-author position.

Unsurprisingly, women are underrepresented across the board, and their visibility varies significantly by field. The predictable patterns show a greater proportion of female authors in disciplines tied to traditionally “feminine” care-taking jobs: ladies make up over a third of the credited authors of education and “pollution and occupation health” papers but only 6.6% of mathematics publications. Check out the website here.