Gender and research Publishing in India: Uniformly high inequality?

Gender inequalities have been a persistent feature of all modern societies. Although employment-related gender discrimination in various forms is legally prohibited, prejudice and violence against females have not been eradicated. Moreover, gendered social expectations can constrain the career choices of both males and females. Within academia, continuing gender imbalances have been found in many countries (Larivière, Ni, Gingras, Cronin, & Sugimoto, 2013), and particularly at senior levels (e.g., Ucal, O'Neil, & Toktas, 2015; Weisshaar, 2017; Winchester & Browning, 2015). India was the fifth largest research producer in 2017, according to Scopus, but has the highest United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) gender inequality index of the 30 largest research producers in Scopus (/hdr.undp.org/en/data) and so is an important case for global science. Moreover, the complex web of influences that have led to women being underrepresented in science in India is not well understood (Gupta, 2015). The absence of basic information about gender inequalities is a serious limitation because gender issues in India differ from the better researched case of the USA, due to economic conditions, probably stronger family influences (Vindhya, 2007), greater female safety concerns (Vindhya, 2007), and differing cultural expectations (Chandrakar, 2014)