Vicious circles of gender bias, lower positions, and lower performance: Gender differences in scholarly productivity and impact

Abstract

It is often argued that female researchers publish on average less than male researchers do, but male and female authored papers have an equal impact. In this paper we try to better understand this phenomenon by (i) comparing the share of male and female researchers within different productivity classes, and (ii) by comparing productivity whereas controlling for a series of relevant covariates. The study is based on a disambiguated Swedish author dataset, consisting of 47,000 researchers and their WoS-publications during the period of 2008-2011 with citations until 2015. As the analysis shows, in order to have impact quantity does make a difference for male and female researchers alike-but women are vastly underrepresented in the group of most productive researchers. We discuss and test several possible explanations of this finding, using a data on personal characteristics from several Swedish universities. Gender differences in age, authorship position, and academic rank do explain quite a part of the productivity differences.

Fig 1. Swedish researchers by gender by age.

Vertical axis: share male researchers; horizontal axis: age groups. Overall share of men: 58% (in 2008).Source: [20].

Fig 2. Swedish researchers by gender and job level.

Vertical axis: share male researchers; horizontal axis: position ordered by increasing job level. The percentage after the job name: the share of that position within total Swedish academic workforce. Overall share of men: 55.4% (in 2015). Source: [21].

Fig 3. Number of CSS3 papers by productivity class and discipline.

Male researchers = straight line, female researchers = dotted line; Lines connect the data points of the seven productivity classes.

Fig 4. Number of CSS3 papers by productivity class and discipline.

Male researchers = straight line, female researchers = dotted line; Lines connect the data points of the seven productivity classes.

Fig 5. Number of CSS3 cited papers by total number of papers and gender.

Left figure: all authors. Right figure: enlarged dense area with low productive authors. Red = female; green = male. Papers and CSS3 papers both fractionally counted. Based on 44,500 Swedish researchers with assigned gender, publications 2008–2011, and citations until end of 2015.

Fig 6. Gender by productivity category and field.

(Vertical axis: share of men; horizontal axis: average number of papers for each of the productivity groups; lines connect the data points of the seven productivity classes.)

Fig 7. Gender bias as coupled vicious circles.