The persistence of the gender gap in academia, especially in traditionally male-dominated STEM fields, continues to puzzle researchers, decades after affirmative-action measures have been introduced. In mathematics, gender inequality still prevails, despite a growing presence of women on all academic levels. It is often arduous to quote comprehensive figures and statistics on women in mathematics, and without such data, explanations for the gender gap are difficult to find.

A relatively unbiased source of data on mathematicians’ careers is their publication record. We have examined publication patterns in mathematics since the 1970s, drawn from hundreds of thousands of records from the extensive zbMATH database. We have searched for differences in publication patterns of men and women mathematicians over the past four decades, particularly looking at journal quality, topical distribution, and coauthor networks. In this talk we will present our data-backed findings, which support the idea that certain gender differences in the publication patterns of men and women mathematicians do indeed exist.

Our analysis aims at providing a basis for further discussions on how to address the problem of closing the gender gap in mathematics.

Talk given on 17 th July 2016 in Berlin at the occasion of EMS/EWM Survey Lectures ìn the 7th ECM Berlin 2016.

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Full paper available here.

Slides available here.