GENDER IN MINERAL NAMES: A RECORD OF PAST AND ONGOING DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION CHALLENGES IN THE EARTH SCIENCES (Invited Presentation)

Minerals are important components in our technology and environment, and their names are featured in a wide breadth of scientific literature within the fields of geology, materials science, biology, and others. The way minerals are named has changed over time following general trends in scientific naming, rendering mineral names a robust record of changes with respect to culture, language, technology, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). We classified the name origins for minerals still considered valid by the International Mineralogical Association as of December 2022 to assess how historic and ongoing DEI issues within the Earth sciences are reflected in mineral names, focusing on gender. More than half (c. 53%) of all minerals are named after people, the identities of whom are largely a reflection of the people who have historically been associated with the geosciences and the minerals industry. As such, only c. 5.3% of the nearly 2600 people with minerals named for them are women. While there has been a significant improvement in female representation since the 1960s, the rate of growth of the year-on-year female representation among new mineral namesakes has decreased in recent decades and is asymptotically approaching a ceiling of c. 9% female representation. This contrasts sharply with education data showing significant improvements in PhD attainment by women over the last several decades. However, having a mineral named in one’s honor is generally reserved for later career individuals. Since 1958, the average age of a female scientist honored with a mineral while they were alive was c. 64 years old—around 4.5 years older than male scientists. Assuming a c. 32 year lag time between changes in educational attainment and its effects on mineral naming means that namesake data throughout the last decade should mimic 1980s education trends (with female representation increasing sharply), which is not the case. Combining projections of growth in female representation with estimates of the number of minerals left to describe suggests that equity in new mineral namesakes is not possible without naming significantly more minerals for women. Mineral naming should be considered a reflection of our values as a scientific community and thus, those naming new minerals should take these data into consideration.