Research Trajectories of Female Scholars in Criminology and Criminal Justice

Abstract

Other than through its ties to scholarship on the sociology of higher education, the topic of female scholar productivity appears to be timely in light of the gender transformation underway in criminology and criminal justice (e.g., the majority of CCJ graduate students are female, and the CCJ professorate will be majority female if admission patterns hold). Toward this end, the present study provides an examination of the employment patterns and publication trajectories of 88 female scholars who graduated between 1996 and 2006 from 18 North American doctoral programs in criminology and criminal justice. In addition, the study employs a subset of career concepts (frequency, specialization, seriousness, and co‐offending) to the publication records of a group of 20 graduates we call “academic stars” to more fully explicate trends and issues related to the dissemination of knowledge in leading academic journals. Findings suggest that research productivity varies depending on the measure utilized (e.g., type of outlet; standardized or unstandardized by time‐in‐profession; weighted or unweighted by coauthorship patterns). Different measures of central tendency provide different snapshots of institutional output. Publication frequencies are found to be greater among scholars employed at Carnegie high‐research‐intensity universities. Regarding research type‐mix, the stars tend to be more eclectic than specialized. Future directions for research are also discussed.