This study examines the extent to which women are represented among the world’s highly cited researchers (HCRs) and explores their representation over time and across fields, regions, and countries. The study identifies 11,842 HCRs in all fields and uses Gender-API, Genderize.Io, Namsor, and the web to identify their gender. Women’s share of HCRs grew from 13.1% in 2014 to 14.0% in 2021; however, the increase is slower than that of women’s representation among the general population of authors. The data show that women’s share of HCRs would need to increase by 100% in health and social sciences, 200% in agriculture, biology, earth, and environmental sciences, 300% in mathematics and physics, and 500% in chemistry, computer science, and engineering to close the gap with men. Women’s representation among all HCRs in North America, Europe, and Oceania ranges from 15% to 18%, compared to a world average of 13.7%. Among countries with the highest number of HCRs, the gender gap is least evident in Switzerland, Brazil, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States and most noticeable in Asian countries. The study reviews factors that can be seen to influence the gender gap among HCRs and makes recommendations for improvement.

This study examines gender disparities in the world’s 141 most prestigious international research awards. I find that (a) from 2001 to 2020 these awards were received 3,445 times by 2,011 men and 262 women; (b) women’s share increased from an annual average of 6% during 2001–2005 to an annual average of 19% during 2016–2020; (c) 49 of the 141 awards were not received by women during 2016–2020; and (d) when the numbers of female full professors are taken into consideration, the gender gap remains highly disproportionate in biological and life sciences, computer science, and mathematics. Overall, women would be expected to increase their share of awards by nearly 50% to achieve parity with men today. The study shows great similarities between men and women award recipients in journal articles per author, the average number of authors per article, the proportion of articles in top journals, citations per article, and participation in large research groups and international collaborations. I conclude that the gender gap in highly prestigious research awards is largely a result of demographic inertia and other factors that deserve further investigation.

This study uses the checklist method, survey studies, and Highly Cited Researchers to identify 100 highly prestigious international academic awards. The study then examines the impact of using these awards on the Academic Ranking of World Universities (the Shanghai Ranking), the QS World University Rankings, and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Results show that awards considerably change the rankings and scores of top universities, especially those that receive a large number of awards and those that receive few or no awards. The rankings of all other universities with relatively similar numbers of awards remain intact. If given 20% weight, as was the case in this study, awards help ranking systems set universities further apart from each other, making it easier for users to detect differences in the levels of performance. Adding awards to ranking systems benefits United States universities the most as a result of winning 58% of 1,451 awards given in 2010–2019. Developers of ranking systems should consider adding awards as a variable in assessing the performance of universities. Users of university rankings should pay attention to both ranking positions and scores.