Thus, although women are in the majority among PhDs, among full professors there is only one woman for every three men. This ratio has hardly changed in recent years, and some recent indicators even point to a worsening of the gaps between tenure-eligible lecturers.
However, other data are truly surprising. Women apply for accreditation having participated in more research projects than men, but having signed fewer articles. For research accreditation, for example, men apply with an average of one project less than women, but with almost two more articles on average. In some areas the difference is as much as six items more in favour of men.
How do we interpret these data? The mechanisms that explain these striking differences can vary greatly. There are social dynamics that are maintained in our societies generating and maintaining inequality between men and women. One of the main ones is the way in which the burden of parenting and caregiving continues to be disproportionately borne by women, with consequences for their academic productivity. But it is also very difficult not to interpret these differences in the light of what the most detailed analyses insist on reminding us of time and again: that women’s academic work is less recognised than that of their male peers.
Women are just as or more involved in projects as men, but much less in the most prestigious product of research: publications.
And what do we do with this data? Accrediting agencies, selection committees, departments and institutes have to make decisions on these CVs, with these differences between men and women. They cannot have exclusive responsibility for correcting gaps that are determined by previous and very powerful gender inequality dynamics. Universities, ministries and society as a whole must take responsibility and take measures to correct the social and academic mechanisms that generate inequality wherever they originate.
This commitment must go beyond performative actions, i.e., declarations of principles. For instance, it must take the form of measures to facilitate an intensification of women’s commitment to research after having children. These are decisions that, in concrete terms, are much more complicated to sustain than support for an abstract principle. But these are actions that are still essential, both for reasons of social justice and so that female talent is not lost through a plumbing system with more leaks than we can afford.