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As always, Editors' Update welcomes your feedback, comments and suggestions in our response mailbox, EditorsUpdate2@elsevier.com. Our 23rd Issue, which focused on Women in Science, attracted a response even more substantial than usual. Editors are clearly interested in, and wish to continue to discuss, the gender issue as it applies to the scientific community. Here is some of the feedback we've received:
What you said about Women in Science
Thank you for your report on women in science… I would like to inform you that at women working in science are already recognized in Brazil. In fact, there is a special grant funded by L’Oreal, The Brazilian Academy of Sciences and UNESCO that is awarded every year only to women working in the filed of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Biomedicine. For more information, please, go to the Brazilian Academy of Sciences homepage, www.abnc.org.br
E.Z. |
I am happy to see that Elsevier has realised about how few women form part of the Editorial Board. Many field and aspects of Science have the same problem. In Spain a group of Geologist are working on this and I attached you our first contribution…Regards and thanks for this work.
A.A.Z. |
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You might be interested to learn that when I was editor of Stochastic Processes and their Applications, I had 6 women on the editorial board... The previous high number of women for this journal's editorial board was (I believe) one woman. The countries of these women were France (3), Israel, Spain, and Brazil. All of the women did excellent jobs as Associate Editors.
Also, when I stopped being editor, I helped arrange for the Brazilian woman M.E. Vares to become the editor in chief, a position she currently holds.
P.P.
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Thank you for a timely edition that examines the relative paucity of women in scientific publishing. The following quote may be appropriate:
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. Max Planck.
In time, the number of women in this realm will assume a more accurate balance. It is taking place now in other activities in the field.
Best regards,
K.R.S.
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Thanks, it’s not like this everywhere and I would be interested in discussing this issue.
A.E. |
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Thanks for your message on this question. Just one comment, which is VERY out of date as I left my old university (Cambridge) in 1975.
Certainly there were fewer girls in the physics lectures than men but among the professors/lecturers, women held some of the most prestigious posts. In pure mathematics in particular, I estimate that women were proportionally more numerous than men, given the huge imbalance in the women/men ration when the colleges were still unisex. Of course, such an imbalance meant that many of the girl undergraduates were very bright indeed, selection being so severe.
My point is simply that in such a discussion, the number of women should somehow be weighted to take account of the importance of the posts they hold.
I have no information about the sex ratio among editors but among editorial staff at publishers, I have mostly dealt with women, most of whom were tremendously efficient and competent and pleasant to deal with…
P.H.
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I am glad to say I work for a company where women are very highly placed (research committee 3 men two women).
Frankly considering the work involved in editorial boards and the zero kudos - I think this shows more intelligence on the part of women!
M.S. |
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I could write you a book on this topic!
E.K.S.
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I am co-editor of Advances in Space Research. Since editor-in- chief of this physical journal is a woman, Dr. Peggy Ann Shea, I do not see particular gender problem.
J.L. |
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