How Many Citations to Women is “Enough”? Estimates of Gender Representation in Political Science

Abstract

Recent studies have identified gendered citation gaps in political science journal articles, with male scholars being less likely to cite work by female scholars in comparison to their female peers. While journal editors, editorial boards, and political scientists are becoming more aware of implicit biases and adopting strategies to remedy them, we know less about the proper baselines for citations in subfields and research areas of political science. Without information about how many women should be cited in a research field, it is difficult to know whether the distribution is biased. Using the gender distribution of membership in professional political science organizations and of article authors in 38 political science journals, we provide scholars with baselines for gender representation in citations. We also show that women represent a larger share of organization members than the authors in sponsoring organizations’ journals.

Under-represented, cautious, and modest: the gender gap at European Union Politics

“…Female scholars receive fewer citations (Maliniak et al 2013), although this dimension of the "Mathilda effect" has diminished in more recent years (Dion et al 2018). However, accounting for the gender diversity of the discipline's subfields, Dion and Mitchell (2020) suggest citation rates also vary depending on the distribution of female scholars. With a particular focus on international relations, for instance, Østby et al (2013) show a clear but declining gender gap but, at the same time, note that there is no significant gender bias in publication success or citations.…”

The Gendered Division of Labor in Brazilian Political Science Journals

“…Equally important is the concentration of women in studies on 'law and justice'. That was a surprising result -it was expected that the representation of women would be higher within the topic of 'gender and feminism', given that women not only played a larger role in the genesis of this topic and in recent assessments on its progress, but they also publish more than men in the journals specially dedicated to gender and feminism (DINIZ and FOLTRAN, 2004;DION and MITCHELL, 2019;KEY and SUMNER, 2019;MATOS, 2016;REID and CURY, 2019;YOUNG, 1995). While the results indicate a clear horizontal division of labor, the same is not true for the vertical division.…”

“…Moreover, studies show that women participate less in their countries' professional associations (ABU-LABAN, SAWER and ST-LAURENT, 2018;CARPIUC, 2016;ELIZONDO, 2015;FERNÁNDEZ, 2006), publish, on average, fewer articles and books than men (CARPIUC, 2016;ELIZONDO, 2015;FERNÁNDEZ, 2006;MATHEWS and ANDERSEN, 2001;SAMUELS e TEELE, 2018;TEELE and THELEN, 2017;WILLIAMS et al, 2015), and appear less in award lists (BRANDES et al, 2001), academic citations (DION and MITCHELL, 2019;DION, SUMNER, and MITCHELL, 2018;MITCHELL, LANGE and BRUS, 2013), and course syllabi (COLGAN, 2017). In addition to the female gender being a minority in scientific congresses in the discipline, it is usual to have roundtables and panels made up exclusively of men (BREUNING and LU, 2010;MARQUES, 2016).…”

“…Other studies corroborate the existence of gender inequalities within political science (DION and MITCHELL, 2019;MATHEWS and ANDERSEN, 2001;REID and CURY, 2019;YOUNG, 1995) To contribute to this debate, we combined two sets of studies that have developed within the Brazilian academic literature and were, until now, poorly articulated: one dedicated to identifying the subfields and methodological preferences within the Brazilian political science community (LEITE, 2016;NICOLAU and OLIVEIRA, 2017), and the other dedicated to providing data for the assessment of gender inequalities in submissions and publications within academic venues (BRINGEL, 2016;MENDES and FIGUEIRA, 2019).…”

Language Matters: The Study of Canadian Politics through an Exploration of Syllabi and Comprehensive Exams

“…In this article, we focus on scholars’ language, but it is worth noting that the same rationale applies to the representation of different groups, such as women and Indigenous peoples (Choquette, 2017; Dion and Mitchell, 2020; Everitt, 2021; Hardt et al, 2019; Kim, 2017). As in the case of other groups, one of the most significant normative reasons for encouraging Canadian politics scholars to include the work done by speakers of the other official language is to enrich their own findings.…”