Women in terrestrial microbiology: 2022

Although we have been discussing gender equality for many decades, in 2023 we have not yet reached it. When looking at science, and especially STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) research, it is clear that more efforts are needed to achieve gender equality. Women are still underrepresented in STEM research fields, with only 30% of the world's researchers being women, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Higher dropout rates, resulting in shorter academic careers, are common for women (Huang et al., 2020). While the share of female authors in scientific publications has increased over the last few decades (Huang et al., 2020; Sarabi and Smith, 2023), male authors still dominate the publishing landscape, and even when male and female authors have contributed equally to a publication (i.e., shared first authorship), it is more common to see the male author's name mentioned before the female author's (Broderick and Casadevall, 2019). Women are overall less likely to receive credit for their work than their male counterparts, as male researchers more often receive co-authorship than female researchers for similar tasks (Ross et al., 2022). This brings on a vicious cycle of lower visibility, lower impact, and, in consequence, lower funding and career opportunities (Van den Besselaar and Sandström, 2017). In particular, the higher career ranks, such as full professors, are still very much male-dominated (Van den Besselaar and Sandström, 2017). There is evidence that gender-diverse teams tend to produce research