Text written in Basque and translated automatically by Elia without any subsequent editing. SEE ORIGINAL

The Matilda effect has blurred in the last 125 years

Over the past two decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of women in leadership positions in research teams.

Historically, women’s contribution to science has been underestimated; this discrimination is known as the Matilda effect. In a study, the evolution of this effect has been analyzed, concluding that it has been attenuated in recent decades.

Researchers have used the OpenAlex database to analyze 220 million scientific publications published in the period 1900-2025. Of these, a list of about 60 million authors has been drawn up for the study, which has been divided into two genres by name.

“On average, five more men than expected led the research for every 1,000 publications.”

In many disciplines of science, articles are the main tool for disseminating discoveries and recognizing authorship, so they are ideal for measuring the Matilda effect. The results confirm the importance of the Matilda effect for most of the twentieth century and the systematic exclusion of women from leadership positions. Compared to their participation in science, five more men than expected led the research for an average of 1,000 publications. In addition, discrimination was twofold, as female authors were also significantly less.

“In physics, there are fewer female authors in proportion, but in health sciences, parity has almost been achieved.”

However, according to the results, in the last two decades the trend has changed and the Matilda effect is blurring. Women ' s participation in science has been increasing. between 1910 and 1960, the evolution was slow and irregular. In those decades, world wars had filled the gaps left by men and women ' s participation had increased significantly. However, when the men returned from the war, they again lost their leadership positions. Since then, the increase has been more pronounced, and the authors say that, in general, the Matilda effect is barely noticeable worldwide and in most scientific disciplines.

However, there are important nuances in this general trend. In physics, there are fewer female authors in proportion, but in health sciences, almost parity has been achieved. Geographically, in several Asian countries, such as India, China, Japan and South Korea, women ' s participation is 10 per cent lower than in the rest of the world. On the contrary, in Latin America they are close to equality between male and female authors.

The conclusions are significant, but the authors warn that the study has several limitations. For starters, information might be missing from the database used. In addition, errors could occur in the determination of the binary genus. There are also great differences in the scientific relevance of publications, and the mere numbering does not fully reveal the weight of research. And to conclude, a simple bibliometric approach could provide a limited view of an excessively complex reality.