New research co-authored by Xinyi Zhao and Professor Ridhi Kashyap has revealed that while international recognition is key to many successful academic careers, female scientific researchers are less internationally mobile than their male counterparts.
Female scientific researchers also originate from, and move to, fewer countries, as well as migrating over shorter distances, than male scientists.
Japan and South Korea were among the top destinations for outgoing males, a trend that was not reflected for female scientists.
Only in a handful of countries, including Portugal, Brazil and Argentina, was near gender equality among mobile researchers seen.
However, this gender gap is narrowing, and at a faster rate than the gender gap in the population of general researchers.
This closing gender gap suggests that targeted scholarship and fellowship programmes funded by governments, multilateral organisations, and private foundations have been somewhat successful in helping women advance their academic careers through relocation.
The paper stated,
These trends indicate that broader patterns of increasing feminization of international migration have also occurred for global scholarly migration, a specific type of highly skilled mobility.
The research is the result of a collaboration with Aliakbar Akbaritabar and Emilio Zagheni of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.
Using bibliometric data on over 33 million Scopus publications, the study provides "a global and dynamic view of gendered patterns of transnational scholarly mobility, as measured by volume, distance, diversity, and distribution, from 1998 to 2017."
The paper concludes,
This study represents an initial key step toward improving our understanding of global patterns over time, which is essential for promoting gender-equitable science policies and interventions.
Read more on the University of Oxford website
