A new study from scholars at the University of Ottawa in Canada has examined the publication and citation gaps between men and women in economics and political science research.
In a review of the publication output for men and women economists and political scientists from the top 50 universities around the world (according to the 2023 QS University Ranking), the authors found that the individual publication output for women was about 40 percent lower than for men in both fields. The authors found a similar pattern in research impact, with women in both disciplines receiving less than half the citations compared to men overall, and only slightly more than half over the past six years.
However, these gaps vary by academic rank. While gender gaps in research output and impact appear to be closing at more junior positions, there is a substantial gap between men and women at the full professor rank. Women full professors in economics and political science publish nearly 35 percent less than their male counterparts. Additionally, women full professors receive 5 percent fewer citations in economics and 20 percent fewer citations in political science than their male peers. In both fields, women full professors’ most cited articles receive 40 percent fewer citations than their male counterparts’ top articles.
At the assistant professor level, research output and impact gaps between men and women seemed to have closed in political science. For economics, only the average citations per article show balanced numbers between male and female assistant professors. However, early-career women in economics publish about 20 percent fewer articles than their male peers and receive half the citations men do. When examining differences in citations among early-career men and women economists’ top-cited articles, women’s articles receive about 30 percent fewer citations.
“These trends suggest that the overall individual research output and impact gap between men and women may continue to shrink as full professors are gradually replaced by younger assistant professors,” the authors write. “However, these replacements would spread over years, if not decades, and will likely only slowly close the individual publication and citation gaps between men and women.”