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

Abstract

The gender gap pervades many core aspects of political science. This article reports that females continue to be under-represented as authors and reviewers in European Union Politics and that these differences have only diminished slightly since the second half of the 2000s. We also report that females use more cautious and modest language in their correspondence with the editorial office, but do not find evidence that this under-studied aspect of the gender gap affects the outcome of the reviewing process. The authors discuss some measures European Union Politics and other journals might take to address the imbalance.

Why does gender inequality in academic publishing persist? Lessons and recommendations

“…An important, and reassuring, conclusion from the data from all four journals is that there are no gender biases in editorial decisions of desk-rejections/publication, nor are biases detectable in the recommendations for 'R&R'/'publication'/'rejection' coming out of the double/triple-blind review processes (Bettecken et al, 2022;Grossman, 2020;Haastrup et al, 2022;Martinsen et al, 2022;Verney and Bosco, 2022). Single-authored male and female authors are equally likely to have their manuscript rejected at the submission stage, while co-authored pieces are more likely to be accepted for review.…”

“…Another issue that unmasks a considerable gender difference is an entirely new contribution to the debate presented by Bettecken et al (2022) when they investigate the way female authors and reviewers communicate in their submissions, reviews and correspondence with the editorial team at European Union Politics . A number of findings from this study are relevant to highlight here: First, they find that male authors use on average more words in their author responses and cover letters than females.…”

“…Interestingly, this relationship is reversed and significant when only reviews are considered. This means that while female authors use less words to introduce their research in cover letters or defend their work in their author response, they use significantly more words when reviewing other authors’ work (Bettecken et al 2022). Across all correspondence documents, women also use more cautious and structuring language than men, and the contrast to their male colleagues is very stark – three times the use of cautious wordings.…”

“…Based on the presentations and discussions at the roundtable, the journal editors (in collaboration with co-authors, in some cases) published their results as a special issue of European Political Science (2022). More specifically, European Union Politics reported their gender data and also contributed with a novel investigation into how female authors and reviewers communicate in their submissions, reviews and correspondence with the editorial office compared to their male colleagues (Bettecken et al, 2022). JCMS added to their gender data report a striking analysis of how much the gender bias in European political science costs in terms of unfulfilled and unrealised intellectual capital and research potential in the field due to the lower level of female scholarly submissions (Haastrup et al, 2022).…”

Mission partly accomplished: European Union Politics at 25

“…According to Manners (2007: 90), such claims are ‘monstrous’ and ‘only lead to tighter straightjackets.’ Although the call for theoretical rigor and systematic research designs was welcomed broadly and is embraced by a seemingly ever-growing group of scholars, EU research remains dominated by scholars from Western Europe, especially Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK. Furthermore, the gender gap that persists at EUP (Bettecken et al, 2022; Hagemann, 2022), and the social sciences in general (Dion et al, 2018; Stockemer, 2022; Teele and Thelen, 2017), remains a matter of concern.…”