Presence of Women on the Editorial Boards of Criminology Journals

Abstract

This paper analyzes the presence of women on the editorial boards of journals indexed in the Journal Citation Report (JCR), in the category of Criminology and Penology. For this purpose, a comparative study of the representation of women in editorial positions has been carried out, based on the following indicators: responsibility on the board, individually for each of the publications, quartile of the journals, publisher responsible for the publication and country of publication. The results obtained show the existing gender inequality in the editorial committees of the main journals in Criminology, where there is still a male predominance, and how female representation decreases the higher the position of responsibility in the journal and the lower the quartile where it is located in the ranking. If we take the publisher or the country of publication as a reference, the data confirm the low presence of women in editorial decision-making positions. The study concluded that, although there is a trend towards reversal, in the committees of scientific journals specialized in Criminology, the female presence is still scarce and the existing gender inequality in these positions is verified.