In physics, men benefit more than women from a phenomenon called the "pioneer advantage". Hyunsik Kong, Samuel Martin-Gutierrez and Fariba Karimi from Complexity Science Hub Vienna come to this finding after analyzing thousands of publications from more than 100 years. "Our results indicate that the pioneer advantage plays a crucial role in how gender-specific differences in the perception of research work arise in the physics community," they write in the specialist magazine "Communications Physics".
The first person to publish a research paper on a topic is usually cited by other scientists significantly more often than those who later publish on the same topic. However, men have a cumulative historical advantage, since women enter physics only gradually and much more slowly. Such distortions contribute to the fact that women and other underrepresented groups feel invisible and ignored in an environment dominated by men. The feeling of not being part of the community can lead to an increased dropout rate. This, in turn, has further negative effects in the long term, as there is a lack of diversity, integration, innovation and, above all, role models. "That is why it is of the utmost social importance to precisely recognize these prejudices and to develop bottom-up approaches to combat them," the study authors demand.
In order to examine the pioneer advantage, the group summarized research work that dealt with similar topics and published within a few years; Each couple was once a man the first author, once a woman. The team then determined the number of quotes that each work received over time. When women were the first to publish on a topic, they were tended to be cited less often than the male counterpart. "This can lead to the work of women being overlooked, which reduces their chances of success in the field," conclude the Kong and colleagues. "These distortions should be eliminated as quickly as possible by promoting research work in a targeted and sustainable manner."
