PUBBLICAZIONE/PUBLICATION

Permanent URI for this communityhttps://gendermore.unimore.it/handle/123456789/1575

Browse

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 15

What's in a number? How (and why) measuring research productivity in different ways changes the gender gap Open PDF
(2018)
Nygaard, L.P.
;
Bahgat, K.
A persistent finding in studies of research productivity is the ‘gender gap’ where men seem to publish more academic research than women. However, this gap varies widely from study to study, and little has been done to explore how these claims might be sensitive to what is being measured and how. Using a dataset of publications statistics spanning five years for a Norwegian social science research institute, this paper looks at how (and why) measuring productivity in different ways provides different pictures of the gender gap. Based on the situated context of the institute, we also disaggregate the data by staff category, methodological orientation, and language background, and consider the impact of leaves of absence. We find widely varying measures of the gender gap depending on how we measure and disaggregate, and argue that different bibliometric indicators capture different aspects of research performance, including diversity of output and collaboration, which reflect different publication practices that are both gendered and situated. We suggest that looking at academic writing as a situated - and gendered - social practice offers a potential for deriving more theoretically consistent explanations for both the seeming persistence of the gender gap and the wide contextual variations. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd
A Rare Case of Gender Parity in Academia Open PDF
(2019)
Lynn, F.B.
;
Noonan, M.C.
;
Sauder, M.
;
Andersson, M.A.
In academia, women trail men in nearly every major professional reward, such as earnings, publications, and funding. Bibliometric studies, however, suggest that citations are unique with regard to gender inequality: female penalties have been reported, but gender parity or even female premiums are routinely documented as well. Two questions follow from this puzzle. First, does gender matter for citations in sociology and neighboring social science disciplines? No theoretically informed study of gender and citations exists for the social science core. We begin to fill this gap by analyzing roughly 10,000 publications in economics, political science, and sociology. In contrast to many big data studies, we estimate the effect of author gender on citations alongside other author-, article-, journal-, and (sub)field-level predictors. Our results strongly suggest that when male and female authors publish articles that are comparably positioned to receive citations, their publications do in fact accrue citations at the same rate. This finding raises a second question: Why would gender matter "everywhere but here"? We hypothesize that the answer is related to the mechanisms (e.g., self-selection, biased assessments of commitment) that are activated in the context of some professional rewards but not citations. We discuss why a null gender finding should not be discarded as an anomaly but rather approached as an analytical opportunity. © 2019 Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2019.
Scientific Careers: Universalism and Particularism Open PDF
(1995)
Long, J. Scott
;
Fox, Mary Frank
Science is an institution with immense inequality in career attainments. Women and most minorities, as groups, have lower levels of participation, position, productivity, and recognition than do white men. Research in the sociology of science has focused on the degree to which different outcomes have resulted from universalistic and from particularistic processes. In this paper we 1) depict the career attainments of women and minorities in science, 2) consider the meaning and measurement of universalism compared to particularism, 3) analyze the causes of differential attainment with a view to assessing evidence for violations of universalism, 4) propose conditions under which particularism is likely to occur, and 5) consider methodological problems that affect this research.
Citations In Economics: Measurement, Uses, and Impacts Open PDF
(2018)
Hamermesh, Daniel S.
I describe and compare sources of data on citations in economics and the statistics derived from them. Constructing data sets of the post-publication citation histories of articles published in the “top five” journals in the 1970s and 2000s, I examine distributions and life cycles of citations, compare citation histories of articles in different subspecialties in economics, and present evidence on the history and heterogeneity of those journals' impacts and the marginal citation productivity of additional coauthors. I use a new data set of the lifetime citation histories of over 1,000 economists from thirty universities to rank economics departments by various measures and demonstrate the importance of intra- and interdepartmental heterogeneity in productivity. Throughout, the discussion summarizes earlier work, including the impacts of citations on salaries and nonmonetary rewards, and how citations reflect judgments about research quality in economics and the importance of economic ideas. (JEL A14, I23)
Sex Differences in Research Productivity: New Evidence about an Old Puzzle Open PDF
([American Sociological Association, Sage Publications, Inc.], 1998)
Xie, Yu
;
Shauman, Kimberlee A.
Numerous studies have found that female scientists publish at lower rates than male scientists. So far, explanations for this consistent pattern have failed to emerge, and sex differences in research productivity remain a puzzle. We report new empirical evidence based on a systematic and detailed analysis of data from four large, nationally representative, cross-sectional surveys of postsecondary faculty in 1969, 1973, 1988, and 1993. Our research yields two main findings. First, sex differences in research productivity declined over the time period studied, with the female-to-male ratio increasing from about 60 percent in the late 1960s to 75 to 80 percent in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Second, most of the observed sex differences in research productivity can be attributed to sex differences in personal characteristics, structural positions, and marital status. These results suggest that sex differences in research productivity stem from sex differences in structural locations and as such respond to the secular improvement of women's position in science.
Underrepresentation of women in the senior levels of Brazilian science Open PDF
(PeerJ Inc., 2017)
Valentova, Jaroslava V.
;
Otta, Emma
;
Silva, Maria Luisa
;
McElligott, Alan G.
Despite significant progress, there is still a gender gap in science all over the world, especially at senior levels. Some progressive countries are recognizing the need to address barriers to gender equality in order to retain their best scientists and innovators, and ensure research excellence and social and economic returns on the investment made by taxpayers each year on training women scientists. We investigated the gender distribution of: (i) the productivity scholarship (PS) holders of the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, CNPq, N = 13,625), (ii) the members of the Brazilian Academy of Science (Academia Brasileira de Ciências, ABC, N = 899), and (iii) the amount of funding awarded for top quality research (“Universal” Call of CNPq, N = 3,836), between the years of 2013 and 2014. Our findings show evidence for gender imbalances in all the studied indicators of Brazilian science. We found that female scientists were more often represented among PS holders at the lower levels of the research ranking system (2). By contrast, male scientists were more often found at higher levels (1A and 1B) of PS holders, indicating the top scientific achievement, both in “Engineering, Exact Sciences, Earth Sciences”, and “Life Sciences”. This imbalance was not found in Humanities and Social Sciences. Only 14% of the ABC members were women. Humanities and Applied Social Sciences had a relatively low representation of women in the Academy (3.7%) compared to Engineering, Exact and Earth Sciences: 54.9% and Life Sciences: 41.4%. Finally, female scientists obtained significantly more funding at the lower level of the research ranking system (2), whereas male scientists obtained significantly more funding at the higher levels (1A and 1B). Our results show strong evidence of a gender imbalance in Brazilian science. We hope that our findings will be used to stimulate reforms that will result in greater equality in Brazilian science, and elsewhere.
Do females create higher impact research? Scopus citations and Mendeley readers for articles from five countries Open PDF
(2018)
Thelwall, M.
There are known gender imbalances in participation in scientific fields, from female dominance of nursing to male dominance of mathematics. It is not clear whether there is also a citation imbalance, with some claiming that male-authored research tends to be more cited. No previous study has assessed gender differences in the readers of academic research on a large scale, however. In response, this article assesses whether there are gender differences in the average citations and/or Mendeley readers of academic publications. Field normalised logged Scopus citations and Mendeley readers from mid-2018 for articles published in 2014 were investigated for articles with first authors from India, Spain, Turkey, the UK and the USA in up to 251 fields with at least 50 male and female authors. Although female-authored research is less cited in Turkey (-4.0%) and India (-3.6%), it is marginally more cited in Spain (0.4%), the UK (0.4%), and the USA (0.2%). Female-authored research has fewer Mendeley readers in India (-1.1%) but more in Spain (1.4%), Turkey (1.1%), the UK (2.7%) and the USA (3.0%). Thus, whilst there may be little practical gender difference in citation impact in countries with mature science systems, the higher female readership impact suggests a wider audience for female-authored research. The results also show that the conclusions from a gender analysis depend on the field normalisation method. A theoretically informed decision must therefore be made about which normalisation to use. The results also suggest that arithmetic mean-based field normalisation is favourable to males. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Excellence and gender equality policies in neoliberal universities
(2017)
Riegraf, B.
;
Weber, L.
The historical nexus of academia and gender has been characterised by exclusivity. The classical idea of innovative science was shaped by male scientists and refl ected their ways of living and was mainly reproduced via gatekeeping and homosocial co-optation processes. Recently, academia has begun a transition towards a new model of academic organisation and governance represented by the vision of the 'neoliberal university'. In this transition the historical nexus between academic 'excellence' and masculine culture is being called into question by new economic mechanisms and instruments of academic governance that are declared to be 'gender neutral' and 'transparent'. In fact, some studies show that management by performance disadvantages female academics by favouring male patronage, but with the instruments of the new governance gender equality can also be introduced as a core principle of excellence criteria, as happened in the case of the German excellence initiative. On the basis of two case studies of German universities, our contribution shows how the nexus between 'excellence' competition and masculine culture is eroding, partly due to new 'quasi'-market mechanisms being combined with gender equality policies. Our fi ndings shed light on new gendered work patterns and inequalities of contemporary academia. Academia is opening up to 'excellent' high-performance women, while other women are still disadvantaged. © Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences, 2017.
Gender and Precarious Research Careers: A Comparative Analysis
(Routledge, 2018)
Poggio, Barbara
;
Murgia, Annalisa.
The literature on gender and science shows that scientific careers continue to be characterised – albeit with important differences among countries – by strong gender discriminations, especially in more prestigious positions. Much less investigated is the issue of which stage in the career such differences begin to show up. Gender and Precarious Research Careers aims to advance the debate on the process of precarisation in higher education and its gendered effects, and springs from a three-year research project across institutions in seven European countries: Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Iceland, Switzerland, Slovenia and Austria. Examining gender asymmetries in academic and research organisations, this insightful volume focuses particularly on early careers. It centres both on STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and SSH (Social Science and Humanities) fields. Offering recommendations to design innovative organisational policies and self-tailored ‘Gender Equality Plans’ to be implemented in universities and research centres, this volume will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as Gender Studies, Sociology of Work and Industry, Sociology of Knowledge, Business Studies and Higher Education.
Who acknowledges who? A gender analysis
(2019)
Paul-Hus, A.
;
Mongeon, P.
;
Sainte-Marie, M.
;
Larivière, V.
Acknowledgements found in scholarly papers allow for credit attribution among non-authors—from individuals to organizations—that contributed to a piece of research. As such, they are associated with a different kind of recognition than authorship. While several studies have shown that social factors affect authorship and citation practices, few analyses have been performed on acknowledgements. Based on 878,250 acknowledgees mentioned in 291,167 papers published in 2015 retrieved from Web of Science, the objective of this work-in-progress is to better understand such credit attribution practices and how gender may influence them. Our results show that gender disparities generally found in authorship can be extended to acknowledgements, and that women are even more underrepresented in the acknowledgement than in the authors’ list of a paper. Our findings also confirm that women acknowledge proportionally more women. These results suggest that gender plays a role in the entire spectrum of credit attribution practices, from authorships to acknowledgements.

PUBBLICAZIONE/PUBLICATION

Browse

Filters

Settings

Sort By

Results per page

Search Results