Young Male and Female Scientists: A Quantitative Exploratory Study of the Changing Demographics of the Global Scientific Workforce
Provides a large-scale, longitudinal demographic analysis of the global scientific workforce, revealing nuanced gender dynamics hidden in aggregated data.
This study analyzes 4.3 million scientists from 38 OECD countries (1990-2021) to examine gender and age demographics across 16 STEMM disciplines, finding that women now outnumber men among the youngest scientists in one-third of disciplines and that over half of women scientists work in medicine.
In this study, the global scientific workforce is explored through large-scale, generational, cross-sectional, and longitudinal approaches. We examine 4.3 million nonoccasional scientists from 38 OECD countries publishing in 1990-2021. Our interest is in the changing distribution of young male and female scientists over time across 16 STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine) disciplines. We unpack the details of the changing scientific workforce using age groups. Some disciplines are already numerically dominated by women, and the change is fast in some and slow in other disciplines. In one-third of disciplines, there are already more youngest female than male scientists. Across all disciplines combined, the majority of women are young women. And more than half of women scientists (55.02%) are located in medicine. The usefulness of global bibliometric data sources in analyzing the scientific workforce along gender, age, discipline, and time is tested. Traditional aggregated data about scientists in general hide a nuanced picture of the changing gender dynamics within and across disciplines and age groups. The limitations of bibliometric datasets are explored, and global studies are compared with national-level studies. The methodological choices and their implications are shown, and new opportunities for how to study scientists globally are discussed.