Media coverage can give scientists a powerful career boost, raising their visibility and signaling that their work matters beyond the lab. But a new study finds that benefit goes disproportionately to men, potentially widening existing gender gaps and shaping public perceptions of who counts as a researcher. In an analysis of 1.2 million news stories about scholarly research, men-led papers were found to receive more attention overall and were heavily overrepresented in the top 5% of most covered studies. Women-led papers, on the other hand, clustered at the bottom.

In male-dominated areas such as economics and business, women-led work was slightly more likely to be covered than expected. But in fields nearer gender parity – public health and social sciences – women-led papers were less likely to make the news. The authors compared media coverage with the real gender balance in each field – for example, if only one-quarter of the papers in a field were led by women, that was the baseline for judging under- or overrepresentation.

Source https://www.science.org/content/article/when-women-researchers-publish-media-attention-doesn-t-always-follow

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