By Dr. Marciene Mattleman

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - When Jennifer Jacquet visited the evolutionary biology lab at the University of Washington, she found all males and a trove of 8 million scholarly articles collected through a scholarly archiving service. She recommended finding out what the authors and their articles show about gender differences in publishing.

The group ended up analyzing 2 million articles, by 2.7 million scholars – half published between 1665-1989 with another half between 1990-2010. Data revealed that over the entire 345 years, 22% of the articles by females were published and they were less likely to be the first favored author.

From 1990-2010, while women comprised 42% of all full-time professors, the percentage of women authors went up to 30.

Why do women write less? The article suggests women spend more time raising children, teaching and serving on committees. The data about the gender gap in scholarly publishing fields, written about in The Chronicle of Higher Education, are revealing.