When you鈥檙e settling in to watch a movie, and the music starts playing, it鈥檚 hard to ignore the names that flash first in the opening credits: The Director. The Big Stars.
Name placement matters in academia, too. A revealed there鈥檚 a gender gap in who gets top billing on medical studies published in several of the most prestigious research journals.
, a cardiologist and faculty member of the Duke-NUS medical school in Singapore, said getting top billing isn鈥檛 just about ego. The number of times you nab that 鈥渇irst author鈥 spot on a research paper shapes how you鈥檙e evaluated at work 鈥 everything from tenure possibilities to pay.
鈥淭his is our livelihood,鈥 Lam said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 important.鈥
Traditionally, the last name in a series of authors on a science paper is also prestigious 鈥 it鈥檚 reserved for the most established colleague. First and last in the series is best. That鈥檚 why she was upset when she heard about the study in the British Medical Journal showing women are underrepresented in that first position.
and , with Baylor healthcare system in Dallas, took a close look at the names atop original research articles published in six of the world鈥檚 leading medical journals over the last 20 years.
While women were better represented as first authors in 2014 than 20 years earlier, their numbers have plateaued in recent years, the scientists found, and have declined in some journals.
And that can also be a problem for women鈥檚 health, it turns out. In the same way that having in the movie business makes it more likely a film will have a female protagonist, research shows that studies of new drugs or therapies that have women as first authors are more likely to include a significant number of women as research subjects.
, who chairs the department of emergency medicine at UT Southwestern, says when she designs studies of why women are more likely to die from heart attacks, she approaches it differently than some male doctors do.
鈥淚 think a little bit more than some of my colleagues do about outside pressures,鈥 Diercks said. 鈥淪uch as, the reasons women delay going to the hospital 鈥斅爄s because they鈥檙e a caretaker or because they have pressures to finish the wash or pick up the kids?鈥
She wonders if those pressures might also help explain why women get top billing less often on research papers. Another possibility, she says, is bias in the review process. The editors making decisions about who gets published are often men.
鈥淚 struggle that a lot,鈥 she said. 鈥淚 do believe it鈥檚 truly unconscious and unintentional but it amazes me that it is still there.鈥
Gender bias, intentional or not, is something Carolyn Lam thinks about often.
Just one in five students in her medical school class in Singapore in the early 1990s were women. After graduation, Lam entered a 鈥 cardiology. Still, she doesn鈥檛 fault the system entirely for the gender gap among first authors. In part, she blames herself.
For example, Lam was recently working with two male colleagues on a journal submission when they started talking about whose name should appear first. She stayed silent. And her name went second.
鈥淚 started examining myself a bit,鈥 Lam said. 鈥淲hy didn鈥檛 I ask to be first author?鈥 She realized she should have advocated for herself.
鈥淚 think that sort of behavior is pervasive in many, many fields,鈥 she said. 鈥淪ome may be surprised that it鈥檚 even in medicine, where it may seem cut and dried 鈥 but it鈥檚 not.鈥
So, last month, when Lam was finishing up another study she鈥檇 worked on with two different men and the question of authorship came up, she spoke out.
鈥淢y colleague 鈥 whom I totally respect 鈥 he wrote himself as first author, our senior colleague as last, and me as second,鈥 she said. 鈥淚 was about to shoot off an email saying, 鈥極K, as long as our data get published.鈥 鈥
But she caught herself and, instead, asked to be first author. Her colleague agreed.
This story is part of a NPR鈥檚 reporting partnership with local member stations and聽.