10/19/2026
A new study from the Laurier Centre for Women in Science (WinS) found that women accounted for less than one third of published authors in a sweeping sample of Canadian scientific journals. Notably, the percentage of women submitting manuscripts generally matched those published, suggesting that broader workforce disparities may play a larger role than publication bias.
The authors of the “Balancing the byline” study analyzed more than 67,000 articles submitted to Canada’s biggest publisher of international science journals, Canadian Science Publishing, between 2010 and 2021. It is the first-ever large-scale analysis of gender representation in Canadian STEM journals.
“I expected to see a difference between the proportion of women submitting and women being accepted, and we didn’t find that,” says lead author Eden Hennessey, WinS research and programs director and Wilfrid Laurier University’s equity, diversity and inclusion data specialist. “It turns out there aren’t enough women submitting their work for publication in the first place, so it’s a more complex issue because we can’t just point toward a journal and problematic peer review processes. It’s a much larger, sociocultural phenomenon of gender representation in STEM fields.”
Learn more about their findings and Hennessey’s recommendations to address gender inequity: https://ow.ly/h7wr50ZTcMj
