Contemporary psychology and women: A gender analysis of the scientific production

Abstract

Despite important advances made in recent decades, women are still underrepresented in science (less than 30% of authorships). This study presents a bibliometric analysis of all the Psychology articles published in 2009 included in the Web of Science database (Thomson Reuters) in order to examine the contribution of women in contemporary Psychology, their pattern of research collaboration, the scientific content and the scientific impact from a gender perspective. From a total of 90,067 authorships, gender could be identified in 74,413 (82.6%) of them, being 40,782 (54.8%) male authorships and 33,631 (45.2%) female authorships. These data corresponded to 24,477 (49.9%) individual men and 24,553 (50.1%) women, respectively. Therefore, Psychology presents gender parity in the number of authors, and a gender asymmetry in the number of authorships that it is much lower than in science in general and other specific scientific fields. In relative terms, women tend to be concentrated in the first position of the authorship by-line and much less in the last (senior) position. This double pattern suggests that age probably plays a role in (partly) explaining the slight gender disparity of authorships.

Women Publishing in American Psychological Association Journals: A Gender Analysis of Six Decades

“…Finally, we observed a phenomenon also found in previous gender studies (González-Alvarez, 2017; González-Alvarez & Cervera-Crespo, 2017, 2019): the collaborative pattern among APA authorships is, in a way, dependent on which gender occupied the first and last positions in the article byline (see Figure 3). Thus, within the set of articles signed by a man in the first position, the number of male and female authorships was 59,500 (77.7%) and 17,125 (22.3%), respectively, more asymmetrical than the overall proportion; χ 2 (df = 1) = 4447.71, p < 0.0001, Cramer’s V = .143.…”

“…Our data reveal that the gender structure of the APA contributors has changed radically since the 1960s, with the number of women increasing and approaching gender parity in the last decade (46.4% of authorships in 2012–2016). Results from the last decade are coherent with those obtained in the transversal gender analysis of contemporary psychology (45.2%) carried out by González-Alvarez and Cervera-Crespo (2019). Comparing many scientific fields, research in psychology presents a greater gender balance than other disciplines.…”

“…Nevertheless, a recent and cross-sectional study provided a snapshot of the gender composition of periodical publications in contemporary psychology. González-Alvarez and Cervera-Crespo (2019) analyzed all the psychology articles published in 2009 and included in the Web of Science database (Clarivate Analytics). From a total of 90,067 authorships, gender could be identified in 74,413 (82.6%) of them, being 40,782 (54.8%) men and 33,631 (45.2%) women, suggesting that the gender asymmetry in psychology publications is less pronounced than in science in general and other specific fields.…”

Gender variations in citation distributions in medicine are very small and due to self-citation and journal prestige

“…Journal prestige is arguably the strongest single predictor of a paper's citation impact (Judge, 2016). Prior work suggest that women are less likely than men to publish in journals with high impact factors (see, for example, González-Álvarez and Cervera-Crespo, 2019; Lerchenmüller et al, 2018). To adjust for this factor, we computed the mean NCS-score per journal (MNCS journal).…”

“…These gender imbalances likely reflect myriad obstacles to women's career progress, including chilly and sometimes hostile work climates (Carr et al, 2003; Jenner et al, 2019; Pololi et al, 2013), bias in recruitment and selection practices (Van den Brink, 2011), societal cultures that still expect a strongly gendered division of domestic labor (Jolly et al, 2014), an underrepresentation of women in last-author positions (González-Álvarez and Cervera-Crespo, 2019; Jagsi et al, 2006; Lerchenmueller and Sorenson, 2018), and disparities in research funding (Jagsi et al, 2009; Sege et al, 2015). Given that citation indicators are increasingly being used to inform tenure, hiring and funding decisions in many areas of the medical sciences, possible gender differences in citation impact have the potential to contribute to the perpetuation of these inequalities.…”