Anthropology of Science in the Context of International Indicators: Gender Aspect

The article examines the issue of gender asymmetry in the scientific community, taking into account the fact that, ideally, all scientific interactions are gender-neutral, and a researcher's status, as well as research potential, should be determined solely by the value of their scientific contributions. Statistics from international organizations show that gender imbalances do exist in the scientific community. This forces us to pay attention to the anthropological, social dimension of science, and not just to scientific results. An analysis of statistics from UNESCO and other international organizations, as well as secondary information contained in research materials, has allowed us to identify several gaps and trends in the formation of gender asymmetry: the higher the status of a group of the scientific community, the fewer women there are; female researchers predominate in education and in the public sector, male researchers dominate in in the private sector; in the fields of exact sciences, engineering, technology and mathematics, women scientists are a minority; The editorial and publishing policy of scientific journals records a decrease in the publication activity of female authors. The foreign research tradition notes the use of a separate category of “inbreeding homophilia” to describe interactions between editors, reviewers and authors, which is transformed into “gender homophilia”, which negatively affects the publication activity of female authors. A panorama of ways to even out the asymmetry is recorded: from the introduction of percentage quotas for positions in the management segment to quotas for scholarship programs and the establishment of a holiday – the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. These discrepancies indicate the need for further reforms in the field of education, research practices, mentoring, and the editorial policy of scientific journals in a digital society.