Content uploaded by Gabriela Fontanarrosa
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Gabriela Fontanarrosa on Oct 01, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
Cuadernos de
HERPETOLOGÍA
VOLUMEN 35 - NUMERO 2 - SEPTIEMBRE 2021
ppct.caicyt.gov.ar/index.php/cuadherpetol/
ISSN 1852 - 5768 (en línea)
Revista de la
Asociación Herpetológica Argentina
Cuadernos de
HERPETOLOGÍA
Revista de la Asociación Herpetológica Argentina
Volumen 35 - Número 2 - Septiembre 2021
Trabajo
195
Author for correspondence: marianachp@yahoo.com.ar
Gender inequities in herpetology: the case of the Argentine
community
Mariana Chuliver1, Jimena Grosso2,3,4, Gabriela Fontanarrosa5, Jessica Fratani4, Daiana Paola
Ferraro6, Ana Sofía Duport-Bru4,5, Rosío Gabriela Schneider7,8, María Dolores Casagranda4, Laura
Pereyra9, Natalin Vicente4, María José Salica9, Regina Gabriela Medina5,10,11, Carla Adriana Bessa12,
Romina Semhan4, Miriam Corina Vera8
1 Instituto de Bio y Geociencias del NOA (CONICET-UNSA). Rosario de Lerma, Salta, Argentina.
2 Instituto de Ciencias Marinas y Limnológicas, Universidad Austral de Chile. Valdivia, Chile.
3 Centro de Humedales Río Cruces (UACh), Valdivia, Chile.
4 Unidad Ejecutora Lillo (CONICET-FML). San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán, Argentina.
5 Instituto de Biodiversidad Neotropical (CONICET-UNT). Yerba Buena, Tucumán, Argentina.
6 División Herpetología, Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales “Bernardino Rivadavia” (CONI-
CET). Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
7 Instituto de Diversidad y Evolución Austral (CONICET). Puerto Madryn, Chubut, Argentina.
8 Laboratorio de Genética Evolutiva, Instituto de Biología Subtropical (CONICET). Posadas, Mi-
siones, Argentina.
9 Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas (CONICET- UNJu). San Salvador de Jujuy, Jujuy, Argentina.
10 Cátedra de Biología Animal, Facultad de Ciencias Naturales (UNT). San Miguel de Tucumán,
Tucumán, Argentina.
11 Departamento de Ecología, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Ponticia Universidad Católica de
Chile. Santiago de Chile, Chile.
12 Instituto Nacional de Limnología (CONICET- UNL). Santa Fe, Santa Fe, Argentina.
Cuad. herpetol. 35 (2): 195-205 (2021)
Recibido: 01 Mayo 2021
Revisado: 12 Agosto 2021
Aceptado: 10 Septiembre 2021
Editor Asociado: S. Quinzio
doi: 10.31017/CdH.2021.(2021-029)
ABSTRACT
Women in scientic elds have achieved meaningful gains in terms of participation, and they
even reached gender parity in Argentina. However, in spite of several documented attempts
to close the gender gap, inequalities still remain in dierent academic areas. Considering that
disciplines have developed under dierent historical contexts and institutional settings, it is
relevant to describe gender equality indicators for them. is could also lead us to a better
understanding of the mechanisms modelling global patterns of gender bias. Here we present
a detailed analysis on gender proportion in dierent roles that researchers perform in the Ar-
gentine herpetological community. We gathered data on gender composition of the director
boards and active members of the Argentine Association of Herpetology, and the organizing
committees and participants of the Argentine Congress of Herpetology. We also performed a
survey on gender topics to the attendants to the 20th Argentine Congress of Herpetology. Our
main results pointed out a low number of women in the highest positions of the community
hierarchy, such as chair positions in the AHA and conferences and symposia in congress. is
leads to a lesser visibility of women in contrast to men, and is a potential reason for the low
number of female herpetologists as role models. Furthermore, we detected low numbers of
female herpetologists with long academic paths, depicting a major drop out of women along
their careers. Gender bias in science has a strong hierarchical component and this pattern was
recovered in dierent scientic activities within herpetology. In this sense, directed actions and
targeted policies are required to guarantee the access of women to power positions and for the
promotion or retention for senior female researchers. Identifying the weakest points in terms
of gender equality, and the areas where gender biases are historically established is necessary
to build a more egalitarian community.
Key Words: Gender Gap; Science; Female Representation; AHA; Congress Participation.
196
M. Chuliver et al. - Gender inequities in Argentine herpetology
roles that researchers develop.
One important aspect of the scientic career is
the visibility of the researchers within their discipline
or respective community (Martin, 2014). Conference
attendance, presentations, and plenary talks are re-
levant instances for researchers to achieve visibility,
which lately inuence their perceived quality and
peer-recognition (Schroeder et al., 2013; Jones et
al., 2014). In addition, scientic societies play a large
role in visibilization of their members, providing
opportunities for networking both formally and
informally (Potvin et al., 2018). As a consequence,
scientic societies and all the events or activities
promoted by them may have the capacity to prompt
women in their careers, as well as to promote changes
throughout science to achieve gender equality.
Female participation in science has increased
considerably during the last decades, and Argentina
has been recently pointed out as one of the countries
In recent years, a process of self-evaluation related to
the gender gap has been triggered within the scien-
tic community (de Kleijn et al., 2020; Huang et al.,
2020). us, to measure gender inequities, several
indicators have been dened and implemented at
dierent scales (O’Brien et al., 2019; Huang et al.,
2020). Various studies assessed gender gap in terms
of disparities in authorship, productivity, citations,
or access to funding in almost all disciplines and
countries (e.g., Hill et al., 2010; Larivière et al., 2013;
Shen, 2013; Holman et al., 2018; de Kleijn et al., 2020;
Huang et al., 2020). However, gender inequity is a
multidimensional problem rooted in a historical
gender imbalance that impacts the success rate of
women in academia, therefore, any single indicator is
oen not capable of including all its relevant dimen-
sions (Astegiano et al., 2019; O’Brien et al., 2019).
is highlights the need of evaluating gender bias
in an integrative way and considering the multiple
RESUMEN
Las mujeres han logrado avances signicativos en cuanto a su participación en el campo
cientíco y en Argentina incluso han alcanzado la paridad de género. Sin embargo, a
pesar de varios intentos documentados de cerrar la brecha de género, las desigualda-
des aún persisten en varias áreas académicas. Considerando que distintas disciplinas
se han desarrollado bajo diferentes contextos históricos y escenarios institucionales,
resulta relevante describir los indicadores de equidad para las mismas. Esto además
puede conducir a una mejor comprensión de los mecanismos que modelan los patrones
globales de sesgo de género. En el presente trabajo presentamos un análisis detallado
sobre la proporción de género en diferentes roles que desempeñan los/las investigadores/
as en la comunidad herpetológica argentina. Recogimos datos sobre la composición
por género de las comisiones y los miembros activos de la Asociación Herpetológica
Argentina, y de los comités organizadores y los participantes del Congreso Argentino de
Herpetología. Además, realizamos una encuesta sobre temas de género a los asistentes
al XX Congreso Argentino de Herpetología. Nuestros principales resultados señalaron
un bajo número de mujeres en los puestos de mayor jerarquía dentro de la comunidad,
tales como presidencias en la AHA y participación en conferencias y simposios en
congresos. Esto conduce a una menor visibilidad de las mujeres en comparación con
los cientícos varones y es una posible razón del número comparativamente bajo de
herpetólogas como mentoras o modelos a seguir. Además, detectamos un bajo número
de herpetólogas con trayectorias de larga duración, lo que indicaría una importante
deserción a lo largo de sus carreras. El sesgo de género en ciencia presenta un fuerte
componente jerárquico y este patrón se recuperó en diferentes actividades cientícas
dentro del campo de la herpetología. En este sentido, se requieren acciones dirigidas
y políticas focalizadas para garantizar el acceso de las mujeres a puestos de toma de
decisiones/mayor exposición y para la promoción o retención de investigadoras senior.
Identicar los puntos más débiles en términos de igualdad de género y las áreas donde
los prejuicios de género están históricamente establecidos es necesario para construir
una comunidad más igualitaria.
Palabras claves: Brecha de Género; Ciencia; Representación Femenina; AHA; Parti-
cipación en Congresos.
Introduction
197
Cuad. herpetol. 35 (2): 195-206 (2021)
that reached overall gender parity (de Kleijn et al.,
2020). As such, women represent 61% of the total
tenure researchers, and 53% considering only Life
Sciences (https://cifras.conicet.gov.ar/publica/) in
the main research institution of the country (CO-
NICET). In spite of this rising number of women,
a recent big data analysis including the career path
length of researchers across the world showed a
widening gender gap for certain indicators, such as
productivity and impact (Huang et al., 2020). Studies
like this emphasize the relevance of weighing the
imbalanced access to opportunities faced by women,
even from early career and varying according to geo-
graphic region or discipline (Ceci et al., 2014; Maas
et al., 2020). In this sense, a disaggregated analysis
of indicators and activities for specic scientic
disciplines in Argentina is relevant since it could
reveal a growing gender gap therein.
In Herpetology, particularly, gender disparities
have been indicated regarding female participation
in dierent academic roles, in authorship positions,
and organizing and speaking in symposia or confe-
rences (Parenti and Wake, 2016; Sardelis and Drew,
2016; Salerno et al., 2019; Rock et al., 2021). Recently,
Grosso et al. (2021) found a pattern of male preferen-
tial connections (male homophily) in herpetological
publications that marginalizes women, both at re-
gional and global scales. In addition, a low number
of women in the highest hierarchies in academia,
fewer women than men publishing papers, and a
lack of incentives for women were pointed out in
the Brazilian herpetological community (Carnaval,
2016; Benício and Fonseca, 2019; Werneck et al.,
2019; Slobodian et al., 2021).
The Argentine Herpetological Association
(AHA) is the oldest herpetological society in South
America, holding annual meetings (Argentine Con-
gress of Herpetology) since 1983, and publishing
its own journal (Cuadernos de Herpetología) for
36 years. Up to now, there is only one study about
gender bias in the dynamics of the publication pro-
cess in the Argentine herpetological community
(Grosso et al., 2021). erefore, the aim of this work
is to evaluate the gender proportion at complemen-
tary academic roles that researchers develop, such
as participation in the AHA and the Argentine
Congress of Herpetology. In addition, we tested the
hypothesis that under an unbiased gender scenario,
the proportion of women in top hierarchical or high
exposure positions reects the observed proportion
of female members of the AHA with long career
paths. Finally, we performed a survey to characterize
the general perception of the Argentine herpeto-
logical community on gender topics and to detect
other barriers excluded by the quantitative data. e
analyses presented herein are necessary to identify
the weakest points in terms of gender equality, to
establish which are the areas where gender biases
are historically established, and to propose actions
that may help to close the gender gap.
Materials and methods
We built a gender-database for director boards of
the AHA, its active members, the organizing com-
mittees of the Argentine Congress of Herpetology,
and the congress participants. e gender of the
researchers (assigned as male/female) was identi-
ed using their rst names and following the free
database of Gender Checker (https://genderchecker.
com). Alternatively, gender was determined by visual
inspection of ResearchGate proles or images found
in Google when the author’s name was ambiguous.
e gender approach used here was binary, and
those individuals that could not be categorized as
male or female were excluded from the analyses.
Considering that these were just a few cases, this
removal did not aect the overall sample-size nor
the relevance of the conclusions. We are aware that
the author's self-perceived gender could mismatch
with the gender assigned here, and that the binary
approach excludes other identities that may be pre-
sent in the community. However, we were unable to
consider additional identities due to analytical and
operational limitations.
We gathered information about the gender
composition of the director boards of the AHA by
hierarchies (i.e., chair and board members) during
the 1982–2021 period. We also recorded the gender
of the active members of the association during the
2019–2021 period, and calculated the length of their
academic paths as years from her/his rst published
paper up to 2021. e list of members was collected
from http://aha.org.ar/socios-activos/ and the year
of the publication of their papers was collected
from CONICET webpage, ResearchGate or Google
Scholar (full datasets are available in Supplementary
Table S1).
e gender composition of the Argentine her-
petological community through time was estimated
using the gender proportion of attendants to the
congress spanning the 1999–2019 period. We also
198
M. Chuliver et al. - Gender inequities in Argentine herpetology
org/10.6084/m9.gshare.16530618).
Results
The analyzed data showed only one woman as
chair member of the AHA, throughout 38 years
(1982–2020 period). Aer the election of authori-
ties in 2020 a change was observed and both chair
positions were occupied by women (raising up the
percentage of women to 7.5% for the whole period;
Fig. 1A). Until 1990, female participation on the
director boards was lower than 40% but since 1991
the female proportion has increased, resulting in
more than half of the board occupied by women at
the present (54%; Fig. 1A).
During the 2019–2021 period, women re-
presented 52% of the active members of the AHA.
When analyzing the length of members' academic
paths, women were the majority of the researchers
with short careers paths (i.e., 0 to 14 years), but men
were more represented among long career paths (i.e.,
≥ 15 years; Fig. 1B).
Our results showed that in the last 20 years
of the Argentine Congress of Herpetology wo-
men constituted on average 52% of the organizing
committees and 45% of the authors attending the
event (Fig. 1C–E). Although the overall gender
participation of authors was balanced over the years,
dierences were noticeable when comparing the
gender proportion of invited speakers and regular
exhibitors (Fig. 1F–G). Of the 724 invited speakers,
38% were women (Fig. 1F). For main conferences,
35 women and 86 men were invited, summing up
26.25 h and 64.50 h of exposition, respectively. For
young herpetologists’ conferences, 13 women and
9 men participated during the nine years in which
this event was held. For symposia, 581 authors
participated, 38% of them were women, and female
participation was higher than male only in two years
(Fig. 1F). Opposite to what occurred in the category
of invited speakers, in regular presentations female
participation climbed to 46%, and they even were
majority in some years (Fig. 1G).
e baseline of researchers used to perform
the simulations was composed by 40% of female
herpetologists. e simulations found that the pro-
bability to obtain the observed number of women as
chair members of the AHA (observed proportion: 1
woman out of 46) was 0.001%, while the probability
of being invited as a speaker in main conferences
(observed proportion: 35 women out of 121) was
evaluated gender participation in the Argentine
Congress of Herpetology from 1999 to 2019. We
compiled data of organizing committees and of
authors in the dierent types of presentations (data-
set available in Supplementary Table S2). e authors
were grouped into two main categories: regular
exhibitors and invited speakers. Regular exhibitors
are those presenting short oral communications
and posters. Invited speakers are peer-selected,
commonly funded by the congress organizers, and
their presentations comprise main conferences,
conferences of young herpetologists and symposia.
ese are usually long-lasting lectures, carried out at
the prime-time slot of the congresses. e total time
of exposition for main conferences was calculated for
male and female speakers (considering 45 minutes
each talk). Data of the attendants/authors gender
and the composition of the organizing committees
were obtained from the books of abstracts of each
congress.
We aimed to evaluate if the observed number
of women in hierarchical/high exposure positions
through years was the expected by chance, or if, on
the contrary, existed an underlying process shaping
the gender distribution. In order to do this, we per-
formed 1.000.000 simulations of random gender
assignment to chair members in the AHA and to
speakers in main conferences, calculated the propor-
tion of women in these positions under this neutral
gender scenario, and then compared them with the
observed values. ese simulations were performed
in R (version 3.6.3, R Core Team 2020), and using as
baseline the observed number of active members of
the AHA with long academic paths (i.e., ≥ 15 years).
Finally, we performed a survey among the attendants
to the 20th Argentine Congress of Herpetology in
2019 (dataset available in Supplementary Table S3).
We asked them to respond to a six-point question-
naire about self-gender biases, caregiving tasks, and
career challenges. e questions were: A) K. Smith
recently published a paper. Which do you suppose
is the rst name of this author, Kevin or Karen?, B)
Give the full name of three authors that have inuen-
ced your career, C) Do you have/had to take care of
other people? e.g. children, elder parents, D) If you
do, how does/did aect/ed your professional life?,
E) Do you agree that maternity/paternity leave in
Argentina is enough?, and F) Write a short paragraph
that summarizes the biggest obstacles in your ca reer.
All supplementary les were shared as data-
sets uploaded to gshare repository (https://doi.
199
Cuad. herpetol. 35 (2): 195-206 (2021)
Figure 1. Gender distribution in Argentine Herpetology. (a) Director boards during the 39 years of the Argentine
Herpetological Association (AHA). (b) Career path lengths of active members of the AHA during 2019–2021 period.
(c–g) Gender participation in the Argentine Congress of Herpetology from 1999 to 2019. (c–e) Organizing committees
of the congresses and overall participation among the ve dierent types of presentations. (f) Percentages of partici-
pation of invited speakers. (g) Percentages of participation of regular exhibitors. White numbers on the histograms
represent absolute values of women. Abbreviations: MC = main conferences; YH = young herpetologists conference;
SY = symposia; OR = oral presentations; PO = posters.
200
M. Chuliver et al. - Gender inequities in Argentine herpetology
0.007% (see Supplementary Information Fig. S1).
e survey was answered by 84 congress at-
tendees of dierent academic status, from which
68% were women (Fig. 2). When asked to complete
the rst name of an author given the initial letter
of the name, most of the surveyed thought in a
man (87.5%; Fig. 2A). e same occurred when
the surveyed attendants were asked to mention the
three most inuential researchers in their careers,
the majority named a man as a reference (68%; Fig.
2 B). e survey also revealed that 47% of women
researchers were involved in caregiving tasks and
that most of them felt overwhelmed when balancing
work and life duties (Fig. 2 C–D). Most participants
(94%) answered that leaves for childbirth in Ar-
gentina are too short, especially for fathers (46%;
currently two days aer childbirth; Fig. 2E). Men
and women diered when recognizing the biggest
obstacles in their careers (Fig. 3). Women's answers
pointed primarily to the family burden since the
words that popped out mostly were “children” and
“family”, while money-related issues like “resources”,
“economy”, and “funding” were in second place (Fig.
3A). In contrast, men's most signicant concerns
were related to money, since the word that popped
out mostly was “funding”, and items non-related to
academic activities like “family” or “bureaucracy”
appeared in second place (Fig. 3B).
Discussion
According to our results, women in Argentine her-
petology have almost equal representation as men
in several academic roles—as board members of the
association, members of the organizing committees,
and authors in congresses. However, gender disparity
is evidenced when analyzing women participation
in top hierarchical/high exposure positions—as
chair members of the association, and speakers at
main conferences and congress symposia. Moreover,
through the performed simulations we showed that
about 99% of the simulated cases resulted in a better
scenario for women than portrayed by the real data.
In other words, this depicted a signicantly lower
representation of women in those positions than
expected in an unbiased gender scenario.
An increasing number of women have been
incorporated in scientic disciplines during the last
decade (de Kleijn et al., 2020; Huang et al., 2020).
Nevertheless, Potvin et al. (2018) pointed out that
women fullling leadership roles represent only 9%
within zoological societies in South America. is
gender mismatch at the hierarchical levels reveals a
widespread phenomenon known as “glass ceiling”,
which was described as the intangible barriers—like
peer-recognition, unequal family burden, gender
stereotypes, among others—that prevent the promo-
tion of highly qualied women to power positions
(Akpinar-Sposito, 2013). In Argentina, the AHA
has incorporated two women as chair members
during the election of authorities in 2020, raising
the proportion of women in this academic role.
Further participation of women in decision making
positions has also been reported recently for some
Brazilian professional associations, since they had
incorporated women as presidents, directorships
and board members (Slobodian et al., 2021). e
increase in the representation of women in power
positions is meaningful in a historical gender-
unbalanced scientic landscape (Astegiano et al.,
2019), but considering that research is constructed
in a collaborative fashion, the hierarchical structure
of academia should be under debate as well.
We found two contrasting distribution patterns
among the active members of the AHA. ere are
more women than men among researchers with
short career paths; on the contrary, men are the
majority among researchers with long career paths
(Fig. 1B). is occurs in spite of the recruitment of
female herpetologists has been constant and similar
to that of men since 1999. us, low proportions of
women with long academic paths do not seem to
be the result of low recruitment in the past, but the
consequence of the “leaky pipeline”. is phenome-
non describes the higher dropout rate of women
compared to men´s at all stages of their academic
trajectory (Alper, 1993; Goulden et al., 2011; Shaw
and Stanton, 2012), and was documented in several
scientic elds (e.g., Luckenbill-Edds, 2002; Holmes
et al., 2008; Martin, 2012; Valentova et al., 2017;
Jadidi et al., 2018; Huang et al., 2020).
Multiple factors may lead women to leave
research in sciences, but according to the surveyed
information, caregiving tasks and motherhood could
be the most signicant within the herpetological
community. ese results are reinforced by previous
studies showing that women are more prone than
men to resign labor activities in favor of domestic
life (e.g., Holmes et al., 2008; McGuire et al., 2012;
Cerrato and Cifre, 2018; Lione, 2018), and that
motherhood seems to be a breakthrough event in
201
Cuad. herpetol. 35 (2): 195-206 (2021)
women's academic careers (e.g., Kyvik and Teigen,
1996; Stack, 2004; Fox, 2005; Hunter and Leahey,
2010; Ceci and Williams, 2011; Cech and Blair-Loy,
2019). In the Argentine academic eld—a popula-
tion with high levels of education and a strong pre-
sence of paid work—women spend more time than
Figure 2. Summary of the survey answered by 84 attendees of the 20th Argentine Congress of Herpetology in 2019. (a–e) Questions
with their summarized responses. Color codes in (a), (b) and (e) correspond to the gender referred in the answer.
202
M. Chuliver et al. - Gender inequities in Argentine herpetology
Figure 3. Word cloud constructed from gender-dierentiated responses of the survey released by 84 participants of the 20th Argentine
Congress of Herpetology in 2019.
men in domestic labors and caregiving tasks (Lione,
2018; Andreozzi et al., 2019). However, such choices
might be constrained by gender stereotypes of the
society where female researchers are educated and
develop their scientic careers (Ceci and Williams,
2011).
e performed survey also showed that most
herpetologists thought of a man when asked to
name inuencer scientists in their elds (Fig. 2),
highlighting the low number of women constituting
role models. is is possibly related to the homophi-
lic dynamics and the consequent marginalization
of women described for the publication process in
Herpetology (Grosso et al., 2021). Also, this may be
an outcome of the overall low proportion of women
occupying high exposure positions in this eld. In
203
Cuad. herpetol. 35 (2): 195-206 (2021)
this regard, we found a signicant low number of
women as invited speakers in the Argentine Con-
gress of Herpetology (Fig. 1F), which leads to a lesser
visibility and may inuence their peer-recognition.
Our results agree with previous analyses of gender
participation in congresses for other biological
disciplines, where women were signicantly under-
represented among invited speakers (Schroeder et
al., 2013; Kalejta and Palmenberg, 2017) or had
reduced exposure compared to men (Isbell et al.,
2012; Jones et al., 2014). When analyzing the causes
of these biases, the imbalanced gender proportion of
the organizers has been pointed as responsible for
the low numbers of invited women (Isbell et al., 2012;
Casadevall and Handelsman, 2014; Sardelis and
Drew, 2016; Débarre et al., 2018). is was not the
case in the organizing committees of the Argentine
herpetological congresses, where women's propor-
tions were high (Fig. 1C). us, further studies are
needed to elucidate the factors driving gender bias
in speaker selection.
Achieving gender parity within the scientic
community, does not ensure that women will “break
the glass ceiling” and will occupy high exposure and
decision-making positions, currently occupied by
their male counterparts (McGuire et al., 2012; Shaw
and Stanton, 2012; Holman et al., 2018). Directed
actions and targeted policies are needed to guarantee
promotion and retention of female herpetologists,
particularly of those with more than 15 years of
career path length (Holman et al., 2018; Huang et
al., 2020). Accordingly, since 2016 CONICET has
given funding and institutional endorsement to
those meetings reaching gender parity, in order to
prompt visibility of female scientists and improve
access of young women to role models and mentors.
In this sense, more women in power positions not
only encourages equity, but also enriches profes-
sional relationships and leads to a higher quality of
science (Woolley et al., 2010; Campbell et al., 2013;
Nielsen et al., 2018).
We are aware that deep systemic and intrinsic
changes are required and, in the words of Harding
(1996), the transformation of the very foundations
of science and of the culture that gives its value are
needed. Nevertheless, questioning the practices that
perpetuate gender inequities is a rst step necessary
to build a more egalitarian scientic system.
Acknowledgments
We thank all the colleagues that helped us to check
data related to the author's names. We are very
thankful to Dr. Andrea Torricella (Instituto de
Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales - CONICET) for
contributing with ideas and discussions regarding
the topics of our project. is paper also beneted
from Dr. Julia Astegiano and an anonymous re-
viewer, whose helpful comments greatly improved
the manuscript. We are also grateful for the nancial
support received from the following grants: PICT
2015-820 (DPF), PICT 2017-2437 (JG), PIP 0389,
and PICT 2016- 2772 (GF, JF, MCV), FONDECYT
Postdoctorado 2020 Nº 3200665 (RGM) and Nº
3200490 (JG). Lastly, we want to especially thank
all essential workers whose eort allowed us to
continue our academic work within the context of
the global lockdown in which most of the writing
of this manuscript was performed.
Literature cited
Akpinar-Sposito, C. 2013. Career barriers for women executives
and the glass ceiling syndrome: the case study comparison
between french and turkish women executives. Procedia -
Social and Behavioral Sciences 75: 488–497.
Alper, J. 1993. e pipeline is leaking women all the way along.
Science 260: 409–411.
Andreozzi, L.; Geli, M.; Giustiniani, P. & Peinado, G. 2019.
Informe Final Consultoría Encuesta de Usos de Tiempo y
Brechas de Género en el Sistema Cientíco- Tecnológico
de Santa Fe, Argentina. Available at: https://www.santafe.
gob.ar/index.php/web/content/download/259776/1367043/
Accessed 27 August 2021.
Astegiano, J.; Sebastián-González, E. & Castanho, C.T. 2019
Unravelling the gender productivity gap in science: a meta-
analytical review. Royal Society Open Science 6: 181566.
Benício, R.A. & Fonseca, M.G. 2019. Women and Science: a
portrait of herpetology in the state of Piauí. Brazilian Journal
of Biology 79: 755–757.
Carnaval, A.C. 2016. Breve reexão sobre mulheres cientistas,
e nossa representatividade na Sociedade Brasileira de
Herpetologia. Herpetologia Brasileira 5: 47–48.
Campbell, L.G.; Mehtani, S.; Dozier, M.E. & Rinehart, J. 2013.
Gender-heterogeneous working groups produce higher
quality science. PLoS One 8: e79147.
Casadevall, A. & Handelsman, J. 2014. e presence of female
conveners correlates with a higher proportion of female
speakers at scientic symposia. mBio 5: e00846-13.
Cech, E.A. & Blair-Loy, M. 2019. e changing career trajectories
of new parents in STEM. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences 116: 4182–4187.
Ceci, S.J.; Ginther, D.K.; Kahn, S. & Williams, W.M. 2014.
Women in academic science: a changing landscape.
Psychological Science in the Public Interest 15: 75–141.
Ceci, S.J. & Williams, W.M. 2011. Understanding current causes
of women’s underrepresentation in science. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences 108: 3157–3162.
Cerrato, J. & Cifre, E. 2018. Gender inequality in household chores
and work-family conict. Frontiers in Psychology 9: 1330.
CONICET. https://www.conicet.gov.ar/new_scp/
204
M. Chuliver et al. - Gender inequities in Argentine herpetology
advancedsearch.php.
de Kleijn, M.; Jayabalasingham, B.; Falk-Krzesinski, H.J.; Collins,
T.; Kuiper-Hoyng, L.; Cingolani, I.; Zhang, J.; Roberge,
G.; Deakin, G.; Goodall, A.; Bunker-Whittington, K.;
Berghmans, S.; Huggett, S. & Tobi, S. 2020. e researcher
journey through a gender lens. Resource document. Elsevier.
Available at: https://www.elsevier.com/connect/gender-
report. Accessed 18 March 2021.
Débarre, F.; Rode, N.O. & Ugelvig, L.V. 2018. Gender equity at
scientic events. Evolution Letters 2-3: 148–158.
Fox, M.F. 2005. Gender, family characteristics, and publication
productivity among scientists. Social Studies of Science 35:
131–150.
Google Scholar. Available at: https://scholar.google.com/.
Goulden, M.; Mason, M.A. & Frasch, K. 2011. Keeping women
in the science pipeline. e Annals of the American Academy
of Political and Social Science 638: 141–162.
Grosso, J.; Fratani, J.; Fontanarrosa, G.; Chuliver, M.; Duport-
Bru, A.S.; Schneider, R.G.; Casagranda, M.D.; Ferraro, D.P.;
Vicente, N.; Salica, M.J.; Pereyra, L.; Medina, R.G.; Bessa,
C.; Semhan, R. & Vera, M.C. 2021. Male homophily in
South American herpetology: one of the major processes
underlying the gender gap in publications. Amphibia-
Reptilia: DOI:10.1163/15685381-bja10063.
Harding, S. 1996. Ciencia y Feminismo. Ediciones Morata.
Madrid, España.
Hill, C.; Corbett, C. & St. Rose, A. 2010. Why so few? Women in
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. American
Association of University Women. Washington DC.
Holman, L.; Stuart-Fox, D. & Hauser, C.E. 2018. e gender gap
in science: how long until women are equally represented?
PLoS Biology 16: e2004956.
Holmes, M.A.; O’Connell, S.; Frey, C. & Ongley, L. 2008. Gender
imbalance in US geoscience academia. Nature Geoscience 1:
79–82.
Huang, J.; Gates, A.J.; Sinatra, R. & Barabasi, A.L. 2020.
Historical comparison of gender inequality in scientic
careers across countries and disciplines. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences 117: 4609–4616.
Hunter, L.A. & Leahey, E. 2010. Parenting and research
productivity: New evidence and methods. Social Studies of
Science 40: 433–451.
Isbell, L.A.; Young, T.P. & Harcourt, A.H. 2012. Stag parties
linger: continued gender bias in a female-rich scientic
discipline. PLoS One 7: e49682.
Jadidi, M.; Karimi, F.; Lietz, H. & Wagner, C. 2018. Gender
disparities in science? Dropout, productivity, collaborations
and success of male and female computer scientists.
Advances in Complex Systems 21: 1750011.
Jones, T.M.; Fanson, K.V.; Lanfear, R.; Symonds, M.R.E.
& Higgie, M. 2014. Gender differences in conference
presentations: a consequence of self-selection? PeerJ 2: e627.
Kalejta, R.F. & Palmenberg, A.C. 2017. Gender parity trends
for invited speakers at four prominent virology conference
series. Journal of Virology 91: e00739–17.
Kyvik, S. & Teigen, M. 1996. Child care, research collaboration,
and gender dierences in scientic productivity. Science,
Technology & Human Values 21: 54–71.
Larivière, V.; Ni, C.; Gingras, Y.; Cronin, B. & Sugimoto, C.R.
2013. Bibliometrics: Global gender disparities in science.
Nature News 504: 211.
Lione, S.V. 2018. Trabajo cientíco y trabajo doméstico y de
cuidados no remunerados. Estudio de caso sobre mujeres
investigadoras de la Universidad Nacional del Litoral (Santa
Fe, Argentina). Revista Binacional Brasil-Argentina: Diálogo
entre as ciências 7: 132–166.
Luckenbill-Edds, L. 2002. e educational pipeline for women
in biology: No longer leaking? BioScience 52: 513–521.
Maas, B.; Pakeman, R.J.; Godet, L.; Smith, L.; Devictor, V. &
Primack, R. 2020. Women and Global South strikingly
underrepresented among top-publishing ecologists.
Conservation Letters 14: e12797.
Martin, J.L. 2014. Ten simple rules to achieve conference speaker
gender balance. PLoS Computational Biology 10: e1003903.
Martin, L.J. 2012. Where are the women in ecology? Frontiers
in Ecology and the Environment 10: 177–178.
McGuire, K.L.; Primack, R.B. & Losos, E.C. 2012. Dramatic
improvements and persistent challenges for women
ecologists. BioScience 62: 189–196.
Nielsen, M.W.; Bloch, C.W. & Schiebinger, L. 2018. Making
gender diversity work for scientific discovery and
innovation. Nature Human Behaviour 2: 726–734.
O’Brien, K.R.; Holmgren, M.; Fitzsimmons, T.; Crane, M.E.;
Maxwell, P. & Head, B. 2019. What is gender equality in
science? Trends Ecology and Evolution 34: 395–3599.
Parenti, L.R. & Wake, M.H. 2016. Evolution of the role of
women in the American Society of Ichthyologists and
Herpetologists. Copeia 104: 594–601.
Potvin, D.A.; Burdeld-Steel, E.; Potvin, J.M. & Heap, S.M. 2018.
Diversity begets diversity: A global perspective on gender
equality in scientic society leadership. PLoS One 13: 1–14.
R Core Team 2020. R: A language and environment for statistical
computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna,
Austria. URL https://www.R-project.org/.
ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/
Rock, K.N.; Barnes, I.N.; Deyski, M.S.; Glynn, K.A.; Milstead,
B.N; Rottenborn, M.E.; Andre, N.S.; Dekhtyar, A.; Dekhtyar,
O. & Taylor, E.N. 2021. Quantifying the gender gap in
authorship in Herpetology. Herpetologica 77: 1–13.
Salerno, P.E.; Páez-Vacas, M.; Guayasamin, J.M. & Stynoski, J.L.
2019. Male principal investigators (almost) don’t publish
with women in ecology and zoology. PloS One 14: e0218598.
Sardelis, S. & Drew, J.A. 2016. Not “pulling up the ladder”:
women who organize conference symposia provide
greater opportunities for women to speak at conservation
conferences. PLoS One 11: 1–20.
Schroeder, J.; Dugdale, H.L.; Radersma, R.; Hinsch, M.; Buehler,
D.M.; Saul J.; Porter, L.; Liker, A.; De Cauwer, I.; Johnson, P.J. et
al. 2013. Fewer invited talks by women in evolutionary biology
symposia. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 26: 2063–2069.
Shaw, A.K. & Stanton, D.E. 2012. Leaks in the pipeline:
separating demographic inertia from ongoing gender
dierences in academia. Proceedings of the Royal Society B:
Biological Sciences 279: 3736–3741.
Shen, H. 2013. Inequality quantied: Mind the gender gap.
Nature 495: 22–24.
Slobodian, V.; Soares, K.D.A.; Falaschi, R.L.; Prado, R.L.;
Camelier, P.; Guedes, T.B.; Leal, L.C.; Hsiou, A.S.; Del-Rio,
G.; Costa, E.R.; Pereira, K.R.C.; D’Angiolella, A.B.; Sousa, S.
de A. & Diele-Viegas, L.M. 2021. Why we shouldn’t blame
women for gender disparity in academia: perspectives of
women in zoology. Zoologia 38: e61968.
Stack, S. 2004. Gender, children and research productivity.
Research in Higher Education 45: 891–920.
205
Cuad. herpetol. 35 (2): 195-206 (2021)
Valentova, J.V.; Otta, E.; Silva, M.L. & McElligott, A.G. 2017.
Underrepresentation of women in the senior levels of
Brazilian science. PeerJ 5: e4000.
Werneck, F.P.; Jeckel, A.M., Friol, N.R.; Toledo, D.G.P.; Targino,
M.; Montesinos, R.; Nascimento, L.B.; Silvano, D.L.; França,
D.P.F.; Pereira, J.A.; Pinto, R.R.; Costa-Rodrigues, A.P.V.;
Pereira, E.G.; Mângia, S. & Canedo, L.L. 2019. Ensaios
e Opiniões: Diagnóstico e propostas para ampliar a
representatividade de pesquisadoras em Herpetologia no
Brasil. Herpetologia Brasileira 8: 36–43.
Woolley, A.W.; Chabris, C.F.; Pentland, A.; Hashmi, N. & Malone,
T.W. 2010. Evidence for a collective intelligence factor in the
performance of human groups. Science 330: 686–688.
© 2021 por los autores, licencia otorgada a la Asociación Herpetológica Argentina.
Este artículo es de acceso abierto y distribuido bajo los términos y condiciones de
una licencia Atribución-No Comercial 2.5 Argentina de Creative Commons. Para ver
una copia de esta licencia, visite http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/ar/