New research from scholars at the University of Nevada, Reno, has found a gender gap in the number of publications and citations among women biology professors compared to their male peers.
The research team gathered a census of 5,825 tenure and tenure-track faculty members (2,104 women and 3,721 men) working at 146 Carnegie R1 research institutions in biology departments. Overall, women represented 46.9 percent of assistant professors, 38.5 percent of associate professors, and 30.1 percent of full professors.
On average, women biologists publish less per year, than their male colleagues. Women biology faculty are also more likely to publish in lower-impact factor journals. Furthermore, women in biology receive fewer citations than their male peers, even after accounting for career length, career stage, number of publications, journals in which they publish, and university. However, the study also found that women faculty members in biology require the same amount of time to reach the rank of full professor as male biologists.
“Even if you look for men and women who have the same number of papers and who started publishing in the same year, women on average are cited less,” said lead author David Alvarez-Ponce, professor of biology at the University of Nevada, Reno. “If there is discrimination, a very plausible scenario, I’d like to document it with data.”