You Research Like a Girl: Gendered Research Agendas and Their Implications

Abstract

Political science, like many disciplines, has a “leaky-pipeline” problem. Women are more likely to leave the profession than men. Those who stay are promoted at lower rates. Recent work has pointed toward a likely culprit: women are less likely to submit work to journals. Why? One answer is that women do not believe their work will be published. This article asks whether women systematically study different topics than men and whether these topics may be less likely to appear in top political science journals. To answer this question, we analyzed the content of dissertation abstracts. We found evidence that some topics are indeed gendered. We also found differences in the representation of “women’s” and “men’s” topics in the pages of the top journals. This suggests that research agendas may indeed be gendered and that variation in research topic might be to blame for the submission gap.

Gender and Status in American Political Science: Who Determines Whether a Scholar Is Noteworthy?

“…These trends also exist in political science, where studies have documented that women publish less in general and in the profession’s top journals (Breuning and Sanders 2007; Young 1995; Teele and Thelen 2017; Samuels and Teele 2018; Key and Sumner 2019); that women often study different topics and the subjects women study are less valorized compared to the subjects men study (Maliniak, Oakes, and Tierney 2008, 123; Leahey 2007; Shames and Wise 2017; Key and Sumner 2019); that top journals more often publish topics that interest men compared to women (Key and Sumner 2019); that women are cited less when they do publish (Maliniak, Powers, and Walter 2013; Kim and Grofman 2019a; Dion, Sumner, and Mitchell 2018); that the gender patterns found in articles (lower publication rates and fewer citations) are even worse with respect to book publishing (Samuels and Teele 2018); that women are less likely to be lead authors (Evans and Moulder 2011); that co-authorship boosts submission rates more for men compared to women (Djupe, Smith, and Sokhey 2019); that female scholarship is less likely to appear on graduate syllabi (Colgan 2016; Phull, Ciflikli, and Meibauer 2018); women receive lower course evaluations compared to men (Martin 2016); that “women, although they win more awards today than previously, still are unable to match men in the scholarly recognition given their work” (Tatalovich and Frendreis 2018, 8); and that these findings are longstanding, replicated across vast stretches of time (Young 1995; Mathews and Andersen 2001; Breuning and Sanders 2007).…”

“…The topic of gender in political science journals has been widely studied. Scholars have found gender disparities in editorial boards, publication and citation rates, topics that are published, and more (Maliniak, Oakes, and Tierney 2008; Maliniak, Powers, and Walter 2013; Mitchell, Lange, and Brus 2013; Tatalovich and Frendreis 2018; Teele and Thelen 2017; Dion, Sumner, and Mitchell 2018; Key and Sumner 2019). We conducted a longitudinal coding of editorial boards from 2000–2015 across fifteen journals.…”

“…This difference is partly strategic—women are more likely to submit to journals where they expect to be published, whereas male scholars (particularly assistant professors) have no qualms about “flooding” top journals with submissions that then garner a high numbers of rejections (Djupe, Smith, and Sokhey 2019, 74). But there is also a more prevalent presumption that top journals will not be interested in female scholars’ work (Djupe, Smith, and Sokhey 2019, 74), a presumption that is not wholly without merit given the publication patterns of top journals (Key and Sumner 2019).…”

How Gendered Is the Peer-Review Process? A Mixed-Design Analysis of Reviewer Feedback

“…Several studies find that double-blindness increases submissions from women (Budden et al 2008) and provides a fairer review process compared to a single-blind review process with reviewer knowledge about the author (Tomkins, Zhang, and Heavlin 2017). However, the level of anonymity of the double-blind review process can be questioned in practice as reviewers may be able, for example, to infer the identity of authors from "gendered research agendas" (Key and Sumner 2019). As a result, authors may be held to different standards conditional on their gender.…”

Supporting Junior Women: Strategies for Men Colleagues

“…Scholarly productivity is generally the primary measure of promotion, and women can face challenges related to research. Empirical comparisons of academic submissions find that women submit to journals at lower rates and subsequently are published less frequently due to systemic issues, such as journal gatekeeping on gendered research interests (Key and Sumner 2019;Teele and Thelen 2017). Women face additional challenges to their time for research, with increased demands from teaching, service, and unequal distribution of household and childcare duties, which likely have been further exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic (Goulden, Mason, and Wolfinger 2013).…”