March 8 is International Women’s Day, a time to honor the achievements of women worldwide. We, the Modelling Human-Environmental Interactions Group, celebrate the contributions of women in STEM and hope to contribute to a gender-empowering research environment.

Despite progress, evidence from Europe shows that women are still under-represented in academia (42.3 % of academic staff are women) with only 23.6% of heads of institutions being women. In the field of ecology, these disparities are seen as well. Group leader Prof. María Piquer-Rodríguez contributed to a publication about gender bias in ecology with evidence from Argentina showing that caregiving responsibilities fall disproportionately on women, affecting their uninterrupted work time. Women also spend more time on unpaid domestic labour, especially when working from home. Prof. Piquer-Rodríguez furthermore con-authored another publication on gender-bias in Ecology. The study aims to detect potential gender biases in the authorship of papers and found that women account for 30% of authors of Ecology, yet their contribution to papers is higher than expected by chance (i.e., over-contribution). 

Understanding and addressing these disparities is key to achieving true gender equity in academia.

Happy International Women’s Day!