Editorial: Women in pharmacology of anti-cancer drugs: 2021

Editorial on the Research Topic Women in pharmacology of anti-cancer drugs: 2021 For years women have been underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) university courses and occupations.At present, according to UNESCO, less than 30% of researchers worldwide are women.Similar statistics have been reported for women working in pharmacological research.A survey of the British Pharmacological Society (BPS) showed that while student members were fairly evenly split between the male and female genders (48% men, 52% women), there was a clear reduction in the numbers of female membership from graduation onwards (25% among Full Members, 15% among Fellows and 8.5% among Honorary Fellows).(https://www.bps.ac.uk/about/our-public-benefit/championing- women-in-pharmacology).The dropping of women from the pharmacology profession peaked at the mid-career stage, when personal life/family and professional ambitions might conflict.This is in agreement with previous studies describing the "leak" in the academic pipeline for women who decide to leave science across many STEM fields (Ysseldyk et al., 2019).The BPS contacted the female pharmacologists who had left the workplace and asked them why they had taken such decision.The most common reply was the perceived inability to remain competitive in a profession where success is measured by articles published and grants awarded, with little or no consideration given to time away from work because of maternity leave or childcare.These factors have been amplified during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, when submissions of scientific articles to the medical journals by men has significantly increased, while decreasing for women researchers.Additionally, the number of grant submissions during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic increased for male but not for female researchers, and female researchers were requesting lower amounts of funds in their applications (Davis et al, 2022).

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