More female researchers than ever migrate internationally

More female researchers are moving country than ever before, yet the total number of emigrations is still lower than that of their male counterparts, research finds¹. But the difference in these numbers is shrinking, and it is doing so more quickly than the continuing global gap between the number of published female and male scientists.

International mobility of scientists — including travel for temporary and permanent positions — is important for advancing research careers because it helps scientists to expand their professional networks, join or form international research collaborations and boost their research profiles.

Although female researchers have made great strides towards equality and equity in academia, including a doubling of their numbers between 1993 and 2015², they still face significant and numerous barriers in their research careers. In 2016, female researchers held 41% of academic positions across all disciplines in the 28 member states of the European Union, for example¹. But in many individual EU states, including in the Netherlands and Germany, women held 20% or fewer of all senior academic positions that year.

Narrowing the gap

If more female scientists worked outside their home nation, it could help to improve that ratio, says Xinyi Zhao, lead author of the study, which was published in February. Zhao is a PhD student who studies demographics at the University of Oxford, UK. Moving country, she says, helps female scientists to advance professionally, which could further narrow the gap between the number of female and male researchers.

The authors of the study examined more than 33 million publications that were posted in the Scopus database between 1998 and 2017. They identified researchers’ gender and tracked their movements using the names and institutional affiliations on their publications.

Zhao and her team found that the number of published female researchers between 2013 and 2017 was nearly three times larger than that between 1998 and 2002, rising from around 0.7 million to 1.7 million. (They did not examine the reasons behind the increase.)

The authors also found that the number of female researchers who moved country nearly tripled over the 19-year study period, rising from 29,000 (4.3% of all published female researchers) between 1998 and 2002 to 79,000 (4.6% of all published female researchers) between 2013 and 2017. By contrast, the population of male researchers who moved country grew more slowly; although the numbers doubled, the percentage of published male researchers fell.

A move to equality

Zhao thinks that the gender gap in mobility might be because there are fewer opportunities for female scientists to emigrate abroad, such as for programmes that are designed to support women with families. “But the gap is closing,” she says.

The study found that the pattern of mobility between men and women differed by nation. In most nations, including the United Kingdom and the United States, more male researchers moved country than did their female counterparts; South Korea and Pakistan were among those with the largest gender disparities for mobility. The numbers were roughly equal in some nations, including Portugal and Serbia. Heike Jöns, who studies academic mobility at Loughborough University, UK, says that female scientists move more often to nations that have greater gender equality and more policies to promote women in science than their home country.

The United States remains the most popular destination for both female and male researchers who move country, according to the February study. The authors say that the nation is perceived as more supportive of female academics than elsewhere.

The study did not examine mobility patterns for scientists who identify as non-binary.

Jöns notes that in its definition of international migration, the study does not differentiate between temporary positions and permanent appointments. This distinction, says Jöns, could help to give a clearer picture of the precarity of academia for female researchers; growth in migration for a permanent position indicates that women are more secure professionally than does growth for temporary positions.