Are you a male or a female subscriber to Nature Reviews Cancer? In academic research, does the gender of the researcher or Review author matter? That the research is good, that the researchers are expert and that the Reviews are authoritative is what is important.

A quick assessment of Reviews and Perspectives published since this journal's launch almost 5 years ago revealed that around 20% of our authors are women. This is in line with the proportion of women that are employed as associate professors or above in the top 50 biology departments in the United States (see Nature Rev. Mol. Cell Biol. 7, 287–290 (2006)).

But why is it that although half of current Ph.D. students are female, such a small number go on to obtain tenure? Some women choose not to go down this road, but for those that do, the recent commentary by Ben Barres in Nature (Nature 442, 133–136 (2006)) implies that they will encounter prejudice, albeit of a covert nature. Having spoken to a number of female heads of laboratories over recent months, prejudice is certainly evident on a scale that one might find surprising. Studies cited in the Barres article indicate that women who apply for research grants need to be 2.5 times more productive than their male counterparts to be set on an equal footing, and their gender can influence the resources allocated to their labs.

There are many great researchers, both male and female, who work on all aspects of cancer research and who inspire their students. Now that prejudice in research is being openly discussed, let us hope that current female researchers (and other under-represented groups in science) are able to progress to the top echelons of cancer research in a manner that reflects their excellence alone.