Gender and territorial patterns in the distribution of academic prestige. The case of the National Awards of the Cuban Academy of Sciences (2014-2023)

Abstract

Aim: To analyze, using a quantitative methodology, the gender and territorial patterns in the set of works recognized with the National Awards of the Cuban Academy of Sciences during the period of 2014 to 2023.

Methods: The set of authors, and their relationships within the author groups of each work, were modeled with a co-authorship network. The authors were grouped according to their gender and the province of their institutional affiliation, and the effect of these groupings on the distribution of a centrality measure, used here as an estimator of authorial prestige, was compared. The percentage of female participation per award in each of the branches of science was also compared.

Results: The analysis of the distribution of the centrality measure revealed that, regardless of the grouping by gender, the authors from the capital have a statistically higher score than their counterparts from the rest of the country. It was also observed that the patterns of female participation in each branch of science are consistent with the dynamics of feminization and masculinization of the different academic disciplines in the country, which have been evidenced by official statistics and by the results of other scientific research.

Conclusion: The results of this study contribute to highlight the inequalities in the dynamics of participation in science, technology and innovation that persist in the country; and how these inequalities are in turn reproduced in the spaces of greater social legitimization of the scientific activity.