GoKawiilWomen’s growing participation in research is not always matched by high-profile authorship positions.Credit: Pierre Trihan/AFP via Getty
In some ways, women have made incredible gains in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). In 2022, they represented 41% of all active researchers, globally — up from 28% in 2001 — and 44% of new US science and engineering doctorates in 2023.
However, an analysis of first and last authorship in journals tracked by Nature Index reveals a persistent gender imbalance in these markers of scientific contribution and authority, indicating that recognition in top-tier academic publishing has not kept pace with women’s growing presence in research.
Among the natural-sciences journals tracked by the index, women represented 29% of first-author positions and 17% of last-author positions in 2025. These figures have improved only slightly over the past decade (see ‘Slow progress’), up from 28% of first-author positions and 15% of last-author positions in 2015, and are nowhere near gender parity — having women make up 40–60% of these authorships.
The fact that women make up less than one-third of first authors and less than one-fifth of last authors in this data set is troubling because of the status that is baked into these positions, says Cassidy Sugimoto, an information scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
The first-author position is generally given to the researcher who did most of the work, and the last-author position tends to be reserved for the principal investigator. For junior and senior researchers, first and last authorships “are the coin of the realm in science”, Sugimoto says, and can mean career opportunities, grants and “other kinds of accolades in the academic market”.
Compared with the overall proportion of female authorships in the natural sciences in 2025 (31%), the percentage of women in last-author positions is especially low. A similar pattern is seen in the health sciences. Although women accounted for 41% of authorships in health-sciences papers in 2025 and made up 44% of first authors, they held only 31% of last authorships.
Because Nature Index tracks only a selected set of high‑impact journals, the findings point to persistent barriers for women at the highest levels of academic publishing.
Accounting for the Index’s focus on top‑tier journals is “super important”, says Curt Rice, founder of Publishing Unlocked, an Oslo‑based initiative that supports early‑career researchers. “It’s not so much about who is doing the research,” he says, “but about who is being recognized at the top of the publication hierarchy.”
A closer look
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