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Start date: 2024Geographical Area: search.filters.geographical.Italy

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Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
  • Item type:Publication,
    Breaking the glass door in academia? Looking at the role of scientific fields and contextual factors in moderating the gender gap in recruitment: evidence from Italy Open PDF 
    (Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2025-07-15)
    Gaiaschi, Camilla
    Women's presence in academia has sharply increased in recent years, but gender inequalities in career progression persist. Italy makes no exception to this trend as different studies on the promotion gap to associate and to full professors have suggested. However, no measure of the adjusted gender differential in the previous steps of the career, that is in the transition from the post-doc to the assistant professor position, has been provided so far. This paper aims to fulfill this gap by means of an original, longitudinal, and multi-source dataset on the Italian academic population which has allowed to measure the female disadvantage in recruitment by controlling for a large set of confounding characteristics including individual productivity and, most especially, contextual factors, which have been under-explored so far. Results suggest that women face a small adjusted penalty, of around 3-4%, in academic recruitment. However, when disentangling the analyses by scientific field, strong differences emerge, with the gap reaching a maximum of - 10% in physics while being non-significant in many SSH. Within the STEMM, the life sciences, driven by medicine and biology, appear more gender unequal than many hard sciences. Moreover, a growing number of female full professors in the sub-field and working in a department with good financial resources represent two factors that have a moderate role in reducing the gap. All in all, this work sheds light on the importance of organizational and institutional factors in explaining the gender gap thus calling for structural interventions to make universities more inclusive towards women.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Gender bias in evaluating assistant professorship applicants? Evidence from harmonized survey experiments in Germany and Italy Open PDF 
    (Elsevier BV, 2025-02)
    Gërxhani, Klarita
    ;
    Kulic, Nevena
    ;
    Rusconi, Alessandra
    ;
    Solga, Heike
    Abstract This study investigates gender biases in the evaluation of applicants for assistant professorships in Germany and Italy. Drawing on the justification-suppression model of prejudice expression, we explore whether biases against women are expressed, suppressed, or even reversed in the appointment process, considering the different normative gender climates and gender equality strategies in the two countries. Using harmonized factorial survey experiments with professors of economics, political science, and social sciences, we found that women in Germany have an advantage both in perceived qualification for an assistant professorship and in the propensity to receive an interview invitation. In contrast, women in Italy are neither disadvantaged nor advantaged. We also examine whether gender biases exist when there is ambiguity about applicants' academic performance (co-authorship) and career commitment (parental leave). Our results reveal a co-authorship penalty and a parenthood premium in both countries, with no gender differences observed. Our exploratory country comparison suggests that Germany's proactive gender equality policies may be more effective in reducing the gender gap in assistant professor appointments compared to Italy's gender-neutral approach, by favoring equally qualified female applicants.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Assessing Gender Equality in Italian Animal Science: A Case Study on Academic Careers and Research Outcomes Open PDF 
    (MDPI AG, 2025-01-30)
    Sandrucci, Anna
    ;
    Bailoni, Lucia
    ;
    Crepaldi, Paola
    This paper focuses on gender issues within the Italian Animal Science and Production Association (ASPA), which includes both academic and non-academic researchers involved in animal sciences. Data from the association’s archives in 2023 and bibliometric data obtained from Scopus and Web of Science were used. This study highlighted how within the ASPA and in that part of the academic realm falling within the field of animal science, a noticeable gender gap still exists, albeit decreasing over time at a very slow pace. There is clear vertical segregation, with a minority of women occupying full professor positions, and horizontal segregation with a low percentage of women involved in animal science disciplines closer to STEM fields, such as “Animal breeding and genetics”. At the bibliometric level, gender differences in bibliometric indicators are observed, favouring men, although these differences are not significant when considering the academic position, scientific sector, and age. In the official journal of the ASPA (Italian Journal of Animal Science), women are under-represented in prestigious positions such as first, last, and corresponding authors. Scientific societies, academic institutions, and research organizations are called upon to do their part to accelerate the process of overcoming these inequalities.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Gender differences in representation, citations, and h-index: An empirical examination of the field of communication across the ten most productive countries Open PDF 
    (2024)
    Goyanes, Manuel
    ;
    Herrero, Esperanza
    ;
    de-Marcos, Luis
    Women researchers have been shown to be underrepresented in science, especially among the most productive scholars. This is especially relevant in the social sciences and humanities fields, where gender parity is closer, but disparities among top scholars are still pronounced. The gender gap in the field of communication has been explored from several approaches, but studies focusing on gender differences in representation, citations, and h-index are rather scarce. Drawing upon data retrieved from SciVal, we conducted a comparative study of the top 500 and top 100 most productive scholars (N = 5000) for each of the ten most productive countries in communication research in the 2019-2022 period: the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Spain, Germany, India, Australia, Canada, Italy, and the Netherlands. The results indicate a consistent underrepresentation of women, particularly among the top 500, across countries. Despite women being cited more frequently than men in some countries over shorter time frames, a gender bias persists favoring men, particularly when considering the h-index. All in all, our study shows that, despite hints of gender equality in citation patterns, the gender gap still constitutes a structural part of the field of communication when addressing gender representation in research productivity and long-term dynamics of research impact.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Women in Science: Where We Stand?—The WHEN Protocol Open PDF 
    (MDPI, 2025)
    Arnaboldi, Francesca
    ;
    Macagno, Alessia
    ;
    Villani, Marialuisa
    ;
    Biganzoli, Giacomo
    ;
    Bianchi, Francesca
    Gender disparity in scientific fields, identified with the acronym STEM, is a complex issue whose multiple causes have distant origins in time. In the early development of scientific disciplines, women were often denied access to education and professional opportunities, and their contributions to the scientific fields were frequently not recognized. These trends of underrepresentation gave rise to the male-dominated culture in STEM that persists today, as young women often lack female role models and are less likely to pursue careers in STEM, perpetuating the gender gap and limiting women’s influence and visibility in these fields. Here we present the protocol of the WHEN project, which aims to explore the perceptions that high-school students have of scientific careers and of the women in science, investigating whether gender stereotypes persist and can affect decisions about future paths. Through questionnaires, this study investigates the impact of socio-economic variables on the persistence of gender stereotypes and, most importantly, explores the potential for reducing them through direct engagement with female STEM role models.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Who Decides Matters: Female Representation and Academic Career Advancement
    (2024)
    Brunetti, Marianna
    ;
    Fabretti, Annalisa
    ;
    Zoli, Mariangela
    This paper investigates the gender gap in academic promotions. The theoretical model proposed, in which men and women collectively negotiate their career upgrades but with different bargaining power, predicts that the likelihood of career progression for women depends negatively on the share of female scholars among the eligible candidates and positively on the available resources and women’s bargaining power. We relate the latter to metrics of women’s relative representation, such as the Glass-Ceiling Index, the Female Ratio, and the Share of Females in the boards in charge of deciding about those promotions. Leveraging a novel and suitably built dataset covering the universe of Italian Universities’ Departments, we find robust evidence supporting these predictions. In particular, the probability of women being upgraded to associate and full professors is strongly and positively associated with the shares of women in the pool of professors in charge of deciding about those promotions.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Gender Gap in academic medicine: a narrative review and the Italian forensic context
    (2024)
    De Paola, L.
    ;
    Spadazzi, F.
    ;
    Ottaviani, M.
    ;
    Pellegrini, L.
    ;
    Imbriani, M.
    BACKGROUND: Gender gap is a neologism that identifies the disparity between social and professional conditions experienced by females compared to males. The disparity increases as one ascends the academic hierarchy. In recent years, the debate has expanded, and more options have been planned for the elimination of the current gender gap. METHODS: This research was conducted by examining the landscape of the gender gap, particularly in the academic forensic medicine field. Our analysis involved reviewing papers published between 2006 and 2024, identified through electronic database searches (PubMed). The search terms used were: "gender gap" AND "academic" AND "medicine" AND "leadership." In total, we analyzed 85 papers. Additionally, we examined data from forensic medicine residency programs. CONCLUSIONS: The representation of women in medicine is well-known. Despite the increasing number of women in leadership positions in medicine, they still lag significantly behind men. These data highlight a situation that could be seen as grounds for an accusation of "academic abuse". In the Italian forensic residency programs, less than 20% are led by women, and among these, not all hold the rank of full professor. Although a certain rebalancing is already underway, the gap is still significant. There are already regulations obliging local authorities to promote gender equality in councils, companies, and institutions under their jurisdiction. It would be desirable to consider minimum quotas for female participation in university competitions. This would be a first step toward eliminating the gender gap in academic and forensic medical fields.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Gendered Language in Academic Evaluations: Evidence from the Italian University System
    (University of Warwick, Department of Economics, 2024)
    Casamonti, Matilde
    ;
    Zinovyeva, Natalia
    We analyze the impact of evaluator and candidate gender on the language used in academic evaluations using data on 295,000 evaluation reports for applicants seeking professorial promotion across all academic fields in Italy. In this context, candidates are assessed by a national-level committee composed of five randomly selected evaluators from the corresponding field. We observe that the language used in evaluation reports varies significantly with applicants’ productivity and professional ties to evaluators, but we find no indication that the language of the assessments depends on the gender of either the candidates or the evaluators.