Bias against research on gender bias

Aleksandra Cislak,Magdalena Formanowicz,Tamar Saguy

doi:10.1007/s11192-018-2667-0

Aleksandra Cislak, Magdalena Formanowicz + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2667-0

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Abstract

The bias against women in academia is a documented phenomenon that has had detrimental consequences, not only for women, but also for the quality of science. First, gender bias in academia affects female scientists, resulting in their underrepresentation in academic institutions, particularly in higher ranks. The second type of gender bias in science relates to some findings applying only to male participants, which produces biased knowledge. Here, we identify a third potentially powerful source of gender bias in academia: the bias against research on gender bias. In a bibliometric investigation covering a broad range of social sciences, we analyzed published articles on gender bias and race bias and established that articles on gender bias are funded less often and published in journals with a lower Impact Factor than articles on comparable instances of social discrimination. This result suggests the possibility of an underappreciation of the phenomenon of gender bias and related research within the academic community. Addressing this meta-bias is crucial for the further examination of gender inequality, which severely affects many women across the world.

Highlights

Scientometrics (2018) 115:189–200Science it would seem is not sexless; she is a man, a father and infected too. (Woolf 1938/2015, p. 212)Since Virginia Woolf made this statement, many changes have transpired
We propose that studying gender bias may meet with lower appreciation within the scientific community in comparison to studying race bias
Considering that the percentage of women in the author pool had a virtually null effect on both grant acquisition and the Impact Factor, this effect cannot be explained in terms of the gender of the researchers

Summary

Introduction

Scientometrics (2018) 115:189–200Science it would seem is not sexless; she is a man, a father and infected too. (Woolf 1938/2015, p. 212)Since Virginia Woolf made this statement, many changes have transpired. Women are paid less than men (Shen 2013), and their research is less likely to receive funding (Ley and Hamilton 2008) These differences cannot be attributed to levels of commitment or achievement (Wenneras and Wold 1997). It is likely that the gender gap in academia is due to the perceived lack of fit between scientific roles and being a woman (Eagly 1987; Smyth and Nosek 2015). It is ten times more common for female authors to be incorrectly cited as males than for male researchers to be misattributed as female (Krawczyk 2017). Studies have shown that when all other factors were held constant, women were less likely to be hired than men for the role of lab manager (Moss-Racusin et al 2012) and that their research was devalued (Lariviere et al 2013)

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