The gender gap in early career transitions in the life sciences

Homophily, Biased Attention, and the Gender Gap in Science

“…On the other hand, women may place themselves at a disadvantage when collaborating with other women in an outsized fashion because, for example, women tend to be part of less resource-rich and influential networks (Burt, 1992) or because women's work may receive less attention than men's, likely harming career progress (Leahey, 2007). Lerchenmueller and Sorenson (2018), for instance, provide evidence for sex differences in returns to similar levels of citations (an indicator for attention from scientific peers) that lowered women's success rate in grant competitions, directly worsening career prospects. Our research question is, therefore, twofold: What is the source of the observed outsized homophily among female scientists ( Figure 1) and does it help or hinder women's careers when considering attention to their work as critical for career progress?…”

“…As such, observing sex differences in the cross-section may actually obscure that at an early career stage, such sex differences may prove too small to fully account for the observed excess attrition of women. The few longitudinal studies that examine sex differences in career transitions (i.e., promotion rates) indicate that women publish at a somewhat lower rate than men (Lerchenmueller and Sorenson, 2018). And still, even after adjusting for such sex differences in publication records, these studies report a residual effect of gender on the probability of mastering career transitions, indicating that publication records paint an incomplete picture without understanding the underpinning dynamics that contribute to differential research output.…”

“…Some recent research suggests, that men and women may differ in the way they self-promote their work to the consumers of research (King et al, 2017), which may also feed into lower citation counts for articles written by women (Bikard and Fernandez-Mateo, 2018). Lerchenmueller and Sorenson (2018) suggest that even if women receive similar amounts of citations for their work as men, they might benefit less from them in terms of career progress. There is also the possibility that women suffer from biased attention to their work, even if the work is of comparable quality.…”

“…In attempting to explain the gender gap in science, and professional labor markets more broadly, much research has focused on the "glass ceiling" -the idea that women hit invisible barriers beyond which they cannot advance when reaching the upper echelons of their organizations or institutional environments (Rosser, 2004). Because this literature focuses on characterizing barriers these "survivors" still face when having climbed near the top of the career ladder (e.g., Hoisl and Mariani, 2016), and perhaps partly because of richer data availability on the trajectory of senior women, recent research has called attention to the fact that we know relatively little about roadblocks women may face much earlier in their careers, both in science (Lerchenmueller and Sorenson, 2018) and in the broader labor market (Fernandez-Mateo and Fernandez, 2016).…”

The MooSciTIC project: a booster shot of science for West African research and higher education actors

“…Ensuring optimal participation from female scientists and higher education staff proved to be challenging. Indeed, it is well documented that because of the stronger social and cultural constraints, women scientists face greater obstacles than their male counterparts for pursuing scientific careers [3,20]. In Sub-Saharan Africa, women represent barely an average 24% of Full-Time Equivalent positions in government-funded agricultural R&D workforce and are less likely than men to reach advanced university degrees (21% have PhDs) or to hold management and decision-making positions (14%) [21,22].…”