Natural hazards and earthquake science: Gender matters

Gender equality in Earth Sciences is gradually increasing. Looking back at the past twenty years, positive trends have shown an increase in the number of female full and associate professors, like in Italian Universities, from 9.0% to 18.5% and from 23.6% to 28.9% respectively (e.g. Agnini et al., 2020); the progress seen is steady but slow. In United States universities “the fraction of women in the faculty pool decreases with rank, as women comprise 46% of assistant professors, 34% of associate professors, and 19% of full professors” (Ranganathan et al., 2021); similar patterns are reported in Australasia, with 26:74 ratio female:male researchers (Handley et al., 2020). Like other stakeholders, scientific societies such as the European Geosciences Union through its DEI Group (Jesus-Rydin et al., 2020. Eds., 2020) and the Seismological Society of America–JEDI Task Force (Velasco et al., 2021) are recently championing this topic with noteworthy programs, that represent a relevant trend compared to the past; the intergovernmental partnership Group on Earth Observations–GEO begun to reflect on the diversity of its organizational structure and to promote networking with other initiatives (GEO, 2021). Most of the ongoing work is aimed at balancing the current imbalance in the field. The special issue “Women in Seismology 2022” of Frontiers in Earth Sciences itself gives voice and visibility to those who generally have less, both as authors and editors (e.g., Henriques and Garcia, 2022). However, counting the figures of male/female researchers and implementing actions to rectify the situation do not exhaust gender issues in (Earth) Sciences. Therefore, shall we continue reasoning about the integration of gender in research content, where the scenario appears still challenging. Notions of sex and gender need to be preliminarily clarified. Sex refers to biological characteristics while gender refers to socially and culturally constructed norms and behaviors, and the concept varies over time and in different countries. For example, women and men react differently to toxic chemicals. In general, the female body is more OPEN ACCESS