thoughtcrumbs

Historical social stigma of female-authored articles

A librarian trying to find current biographical information on a group of physical anthropologists just remarked to me that the women appear to be much harder to find than the men. The group consists of researchers who published articles in the last 5-20 years, and while many of the men (and some of the women) now hold positions at various universities, a lot of the women seem to have vanished from the digital record. Some may have been wives who co-authored articles with their more famous husbands, others may have left academia to care for families. Most frustrating is that many used their first initials, even for journals that otherwise printed full first names. (A practice that has moved away from the scientific community but increased in the phone book, at least for women living alone.) Even if women do not face as many academic publishing hurdles now, we've still lost valuable information about those who did, just in the last two decades.