Women’s Advancement and Leadership in the Biomedical Research Centres of Catalonia: the gender vicious cycle

Abstract

Recerca sanitària; PERIS; Gènere

Investigación sanitaria; PERIS; Género

Health research; PERIS; Gender

Gender is increasingly recognised as a grand challenge of the scientific enterprise, and many important calls for action have been issued. One poignant example is the “Vicious cycle” that disadvantages women in science presented by the editors of The Lancet Jocalyn Clark and Richard Horton in February 2019. The vicious cycle implies that women are less likely to have leading authorship positions in publications, are less likely to receive funding in their research, have less access to the relevant positions and are less frequently appointed to leadership positions and as a consequence, all these aspects prevent women’s full participation and contributions in biomedical research and inevitably means that women’s opinions are less likely to be voiced. The data presented in this monograph pivots around the gendered data from 19 Catalan biomedical research centres and attempts to illustrate that the gender challenge concerns the different issues of the “vicious cycle”.