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  • Item type:Publication,
    Being a female academic under neoliberal evaluation: A systematic review
    (2021)
    Mula-Flacón, J.
    ;
    Cruz-González, C.
    ;
    Segovia, J.D.
    ;
    Rodríguez, C.L.
    The current academic assessment system is drawing a scenario based on neoliberal values. It has contributed to the perpetuation of gender inequalities. This systematic literature review aims to synthesize the most relevant research on the impact of neoliberalism on the professional identity of female academics. For this purpose, a systematized bibliographic search was carried out in four different databases (Web of Science, Scopus, Education Resources Information Center, and Google Scholar), which yielded a total of 26 articles published in international journals. The results illustrate a research field dominated by the USA and the UK and a trajectory of growth in the literature in recent years. The emerging themes reveal some of the challenges faced by women academics in a neoliberal context. These obstacles may be external and even unconsciously imposed by women academics themselves. Motherhood emerges as one of the most influential aspects of their professional development. Furthermore, our findings explore various ways in which women academics reconstruct their identity in the face of systemic challenges. This manuscript culminates with a discussion of the impact that neoliberal values and their general consequences in the performance evaluation processes of academics have on women. Therefore, we provide a number of implications for professional practice and future lines of research. © 2021 The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Historical comparison of gender inequality in scientific careers across countries and disciplines Open PDF 
    (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020)
    Huang, Junming
    ;
    Gates, Alexander J.
    ;
    Sinatra, Roberta
    ;
    Barabási, Albert-László
    There is extensive, yet fragmented, evidence of gender differences in academia suggesting that women are underrepresented in most scientific disciplines and publish fewer articles throughout a career, and their work acquires fewer citations. Here, we offer a comprehensive picture of longitudinal gender differences in performance through a bibliometric analysis of academic publishing careers by reconstructing the complete publication history of over 1.5 million gender-identified authors whose publishing career ended between 1955 and 2010, covering 83 countries and 13 disciplines. We find that, paradoxically, the increase of participation of women in science over the past 60 years was accompanied by an increase of gender differences in both productivity and impact. Most surprisingly, though, we uncover two gender invariants, finding that men and women publish at a comparable annual rate and have equivalent career-wise impact for the same size body of work. Finally, we demonstrate that differences in publishing career lengths and dropout rates explain a large portion of the reported career-wise differences in productivity and impact, although productivity differences still remain. This comprehensive picture of gender inequality in academia can help rephrase the conversation around the sustainability of women’s careers in academia, with important consequences for institutions and policy makers.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Does a gender-neutral name associate with the research impact of a scientist? Open PDF 
    (2022)
    Zhang, N.
    ;
    He, G.
    ;
    Shi, D.
    ;
    Zhao, Z.
    ;
    Li, J.
    Women have long suffered in both academia and industry from lower status, underrepresentation, unequal treatment, and other challenges based on gender. This paper explores whether a gender-neutral name is associated with the research impact of a scientist by examining three years of citations. The data for this study are derived from publications indexed in ISI's Web of Science (WoS) database from 2009 to 2015. By assigning a name neutralization index score to each author, we investigate the relationship between the neutralization index and citations and find the following results: (1) generally, the more neutral the name, the more citations the publications received; (2) the neutral effect was more pronounced for authors with feminine names than for authors with masculine names. © 2022
  • Item type:Publication,
    A push for inclusive data collection in STEM organizations Open PDF 
    (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2022)
    Burnett, Nicholas P.
    ;
    Hernandez, Alyssa M.
    ;
    King, Emily E.
    ;
    Tanner, Richelle L.
    ;
    Wilsterman, Kathryn
    Professional organizations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are well-positioned to improve the recruitment and retention (R&R) of underrepresented groups (1, 2) by providing targeted professional development, networking opportunities, and political advocacy (3, 4). Tailoring these initiatives to specific underrepresented groups can enhance their impact (5), but this is predicated on organizations knowing their demographic make-up (6). Here, we report patterns in STEM organizations’ collection and usage of demographic data from members and conference attendees, based on information from 73 professional societies representing 712,000 constituents. In light of inconsistencies and limitations that we observed, we suggest survey programs that can serve as models for inclusive survey designs by organizations and, where possible, provide demographic information for benchmarking relative to the general population. With improved surveys, organizations can leverage demographic data to prioritize and evaluate R&R efforts, and share effective strategies for R&R of underrepresented groups across STEM. Baseline demographic data, when compared to the general population (across STEM or across a country), can help organizations set and prioritize R&R goals and, when monitored over time, help organizations evaluate the effectiveness of R&R efforts. Government agencies often provide the most relevant demographic data for a general population in STEM (e.g., the US National Science Foundation) and in a country (e.g., the US Census Bureau) because of their surveys’ large sample sizes and broad distributions. As a result, organizations may be compelled to use government surveys as a model for demographic survey design and for benchmarking (i.e., comparing their organization’s demographic diversity to the general population). Although these agencies survey many categories of demographic information (e.g., gender identity, family status, citizenship, abilities, race and ethnicity), they do not necessarily collect all the demographic information that is considered meaningful to describe the STEM community—i.e., treating some groups as homogeneous (7) and ignoring other groups completely (8). By contrast, inclusive demographic surveys acknowledge the full diversity of identities that are meaningful among members of the STEM community. Thus, organizations seeking to describe their demographic composition are pressured to choose between following the examples of government agencies versus creating new, inclusive surveys to recognize additional (and evolving) identities within the STEM community.