A Case Study of Gender Diversity in a Middle Eastern University

With the rise of women authored articles, it is tempting to believe that gender diversity has been achieved. However, there are several obstacles that remain in the way of achieving equitable gender representation in Higher Education on a global level. In particular, the effect of a traditional middle eastern culture that could limit and curtail the advancement of women in both leadership and authorship roles. In this paper we investigate gender diversity in an American university established in the Middle East. We leverage the coveted first author position as a proxy for author leadership and measure the quantity of publications with either male or female first authors. Additionally, we rely on JIF percentile and CNCI as quality indicators, to qualify the prestige and contributions made by either gender. Our findings suggest that this American university has shown better gender representation than its counterparts in the US with over 36.7% of all first author published articles in 2020 being women compared to the 33.1% of American institutions. We also demonstrate that on average female first author publications have slightly higher JIF percentile and CNCI than their male counterparts.