Lawler Mark, Lewison Grant, Oliver Kathy, Roe Philip, Webber Richard, Sharp Hamish, Lievens Yolande, Sullivan Richard
Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK.
King's College London, Institute of Cancer Policy, Guy's Hospital, London, UK.
Eur J Cancer. 2023 Nov;194:113345. doi: 10.1016/j.ejca.2023.113345. Epub 2023 Sep 17.
Cancer is one of Europe's key research missions, with gender equity a major policy pillar. To benchmark how well European countries perform for gender balance in cancer research, high quality intelligence is required.
For cancer research papers in Europe (EUR31; the 28 EU Member States plus Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) from two specific years (2009 and 2019), we evaluated the numbers of female authors overall and then the female last-author presence, as a proxy of female cancer research leadership.
Overall, female authorship increased from 42% to 49%. In 2009, females represented 50% or more of cancer research authors in only five EUR31 countries. By 2019, that number had risen to 17. In Eastern European (EE) countries, females were more likely to be in the majority. The presence of female cancer research authors in the last (senior) author position increased from 24% to 34%. Five of the top six countries for female authorship in 2019 were from EE, whereas disappointingly four central European countries (Austria (AT), Czechia (CZ), Germany (DE) and Switzerland (CH)) were below the 25th percentile. A number of European powerhouses of cancer research (UK, DE, CH) underperformed in terms of female cancer research leadership. However, when cancer researchers from these countries worked abroad (e.g. Scandinavia, USA) the percentage of females was similar to that of their host countries. A factor potentially influencing female cancer research participation was availability and relative cost of child-care, which is more favourable in Scandinavia and EE than in central/western Europe.
Our data show that Horizon Europe's Cancer Mission must ensure gender equity in its future research programmes and support the enhancement of female cancer research leadership opportunities.
癌症是欧洲的关键研究任务之一，性别平等是一项主要政策支柱。为了衡量欧洲国家在癌症研究中性别平衡方面的表现，需要高质量的情报。
对于欧洲（EUR31；28个欧盟成员国加上冰岛、挪威和瑞士）在两个特定年份（2009年和2019年）发表的癌症研究论文，我们评估了女性作者的总数，然后评估了女性作为最后作者的情况，以此作为女性癌症研究领导力的一个指标。
总体而言，女性作者比例从42%上升到了49%。2009年，在EUR31国家中只有五个国家的女性在癌症研究作者中占比达到或超过50%。到2019年，这一数字已升至17个。在东欧国家，女性更有可能占多数。女性癌症研究作者担任最后（高级）作者职位的比例从24%增加到了34%。2019年女性作者占比排名前六位的国家中有五个来自东欧，而令人失望的是，四个中欧国家（奥地利（AT）、捷克（CZ）、德国（DE）和瑞士（CH））低于第25百分位数。一些欧洲癌症研究强国（英国、德国、瑞士）在女性癌症研究领导力方面表现不佳。然而，当这些国家的癌症研究人员在国外工作（如斯堪的纳维亚、美国）时，女性的比例与所在国相似。一个可能影响女性参与癌症研究的因素是托儿服务的可获得性和相对成本，在斯堪的纳维亚和东欧比在中欧/西欧更有利。
我们的数据表明，欧洲地平线计划的癌症任务必须在其未来的研究计划中确保性别平等，并支持增加女性癌症研究领导力机会。
