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

Dion, Michelle L.; Mitchell, Sara McLaughlin

doi:10.1017/s1049096519001173

Cited by 16 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Given that women constitute a clear critical mass in the politics and gender area, we expect female, male, and mixed gender authors to be similarly likely to cite work by women in Politics & Gender . Political methodology is the APSA section with the highest proportion of male members and thus we expect to confirm earlier analyses of Political Analysis , which show a clear gender gap in citations (Dion and Mitchell 2012). We anticipate that APSR will fall somewhere in the middle, given that it represents political science research broadly; 37.5% of APSA members self-identify as female (APSA 2017).…”

Section: Data and Analysessupporting

confidence: 77%

“…We start with a basic question about gendered variance in citations: do women faculty receive fewer citations to their journal articles than male faculty? Several disciplines produce evidence of lower citation levels for female scholars compared to male scholars in the same field including economics (Ferber 1988; Ferber and Brün 2011), ecology (Cameron, White, and Gray 2016), political science (Dion and Mitchell 2012; Maliniak, Powers, and Walter 2013; Mitchell, Lange, and Brus 2013; Roberts, Stewart, and Nielsen 2017), library and information sciences (Håkanson 2005), linguistics and sociology (Leahey, Crockett, and Hunter 2008), and health and natural sciences (Aksnes et al. 2011; Beaudry and Larivière 2016).…”

Section: Research On Gendered Citation Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The analyses show that the proportion of citations of women’s research is three times higher for female authors compared to male authors in ISQ and twice as large for female authors in ISP . Dion and Mitchell (2012) conduct similar analyses for 2005 journal issues for Conflict Management and Peace Science (CMPS), Journal of Conflict Resolution (JCR) , and Political Analysis . Female authors in CMPS are three times more likely to cite the work of other female scholars in comparison to male authors, an effect that is very close to what Mitchell, Lange, and Brus (2013) reported for ISQ 10 .…”

Section: Research On Gendered Citation Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gendered Citation Patterns across Political Science and Social Science Methodology Fields

2018

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Accumulated evidence identifies discernible gender gaps across many dimensions of professional academic careers including salaries, publication rates, journal placement, career progress, and academic service. Recent work in political science also reveals gender gaps in citations, with articles written by men citing work by other male scholars more often than work by female scholars. This study estimates the gender gap in citations across political science subfields and across methodological subfields within political science, sociology, and economics. The research design captures variance across research areas in terms of the underlying distribution of female scholars. We expect that subfields within political science and social science disciplines with more women will have smaller gender citation gaps, a reduction of the “Matthew effect” where men’s research is viewed as the most central and important in a field. However, gender citation gaps may persist if a “Matilda effect” occurs whereby women’s research is viewed as less important or their ideas are attributed to male scholars, even as a field becomes more diverse. Analysing all articles published from 2007–2016 in several journals, we find that female scholars are significantly more likely than mixed gender or male author teams to cite research by their female peers, but that these citation rates vary depending on the overall distribution of women in their field. More gender diverse subfields and disciplines produce smaller gender citation gaps, consistent with a reduction in the “Matthew effect”. However, we also observe undercitation of work by women, even in journals that publish mostly female authors. While improvements in gender diversity in academia increase the visibility and impact of scholarly work by women, implicit biases in citation practices in the social sciences persist.

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Section: Data and Analysessupporting

confidence: 77%

Section: Research On Gendered Citation Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Research On Gendered Citation Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gendered Citation Patterns across Political Science and Social Science Methodology Fields

2018

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“…There is also a case for citation rates being affected by ideological bias. This is particularly controversial at the present time in light of social justice calls for researchers to decolonize their reference lists, and include more women in their citations (Dion & Mitchell, 2020;Dworkin et al, 2020). However, in one high-profile example of ideological bias in citation rates, Honeycutt and Jussim (2020) found that studies of gender biases in academic hiring do not appear to be cited in accordance with ostensible scientific quality.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ideological measurement in social and political psychology

Ca¹

2020

Preprint

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As the domains of social and personality psychological science undergo marked changes in their approach to research (e.g., open science practices, and addressing the replication crisis), it is important to undertake a full review of the tools and measures that we have at our disposal.In addition, the growing sense of political and ideological polarization in contemporary western democracies necessitates a coherent and internally consistent approach to studying politically and ideologically sensitive topics. This paper explores the measurement and study of such topics, and posits that claims about (a)symmetries between ideological partisans may be rooted in different measurement approaches. A more consistent and ecologically valid approach to studying partisan engagement with political topics is advocated, focusing on situational responses to ideologically salient scenarios, rather than placing our focus on results from decontextualized self-report individual difference measures. Suggestions for broader debiasing research reforms are also explored. Ideological measurement in social and political psychologyThe landscape of social psychology is currently undergoing some stark changes.Emerging practices to address the 'replication crisis' (Brandt et al., 2014;Lindsay, 2015) and the advent of increasingly open research practices, such as data-and materials-sharing, protocol and analytic pre-registration, and the peer-review of research plans before data are collected and results are known (Chambers, 2018;van't Veer & Giner-Sorolla, 2016; have led the field to consider some of the questionable research practices that have historically persisted in some spheres .Although these movements are clearly positive for the state of our science, they focus only on the higher-level processes associated with potential biases in research design and execution. This paper begins by looking at the 'nuts and bolts' of social and personality psychological research, as applied in the political domain, to explore potential sources of ideological bias in the conceptualization and interpretation of ideologies. That is, there is an argument to be made that our current approaches to studying similarities and differences between those from competing political or ideological persuasions (from here, these similarities and differences are referred to as 'political/ideological (a)symmetries') may contain epistemic biases on the part of the field in the aggregate. In doing so, a critique of commonly used measurement tools in the political psychology domain is offered, and further suggestions for alternative approaches to researching ideological (a)symmetries are offered that are consistent with the continuing the recent advances in social psychological research.

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“…2 These types of biases echo the enduring problems in political science. Gender gaps have been consistently identified in political science citations, syllabi, and books, whereas the academic study of politics historically has focused on a small number of wealthy countries (Dion and Mitchell 2019;Wilson and Knutsen 2020). The prominent initiatives Women Also Know Stuff and People of Color Also Know Stuff were motivated partly by a closely related bias: publications and events about politics are less likely to include experts who are white women or people of color (Beaulieu et al 2017;Lemi, Osorio, and Rush 2019).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing Bias in Wikipedia’s Coverage of Political Scientists

Baltz

2022

APSC

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

Cited by 16 publications

References 24 publications

Gendered Citation Patterns across Political Science and Social Science Methodology Fields

Gendered Citation Patterns across Political Science and Social Science Methodology Fields

Ideological measurement in social and political psychology

Reducing Bias in Wikipedia’s Coverage of Political Scientists

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