A study authored by EARTH graduate student Christopher Emproto and co-authored by Professor Adam Simon has identified significant gender imbalances in mineral naming.
Out of 5,896 minerals approved by the International Mineralogical Association, over half are named after people, but just 6.1 percent of those people are women. Among scientists who were alive when a mineral was named for them, women were an average of 3.74 years older than men when evaluated over the same timespan (1954–2022).
The results show that gender disparities exist in current mineral naming and achieving gender parity among new namesakes requires significant demographic changes.
For more details, access the full study here.
