Gender and authorship patterns in an African librarianship journal, 1991-1997

The authorship of AJLAIS over seven years was subjected to analysis by gender, collaboration and institutional affiliation. A total of 95 research articles contributed by 118 authors were analysed. Results indicated male dominance of single-authored articles, 83.2 per cent to 16.8 per cent. Of the 16 co-authored articles nine (56.25 per cent) were co-authored by men only, one article (6.25 per cent) was co-authored by women only, and gender mixture was found in six (37.5 per cent) of the articles. A cross-tabulation of institutional affiliation with gender revealed that no woman contributed any article from special and public libraries while there was a relative gender mixture in academic libraries and library schools. There is a need to encourage female publication output in all sectors of librarianship and information science in Africa.