Image by London Student Feminists (Creative Common License)
I want to thank all contributors to what has been an outstanding symposium on the gender gap in political science. While much of the empirical material came from the political science discipline, there is no reason to believe that other disciplines aren’t suffering from similar issues. For example, one study found that the gender salary gap is lower in political science than in anthropology, economics and sociology (the other disciplines in the study). Much progress has been made. For example, women on the assistant professorship job market are as likely as men to get a tenure track job, although the “leaky pipeline” problem continues to exist.
Women continue to be disadvantaged on important metrics that count for advancement in political science and other academic disciplines. This symposium has mostly focused on citations and teaching evaluations but we could have highlighted other dimensions too, for example that women are asked to do more administrative service and are less likely to say no.
We have seen insightful answers to the question why these disadvantages persist. Some of these answers were inspired by social science research- others were more personal reflections. We have also had interesting suggestions for improvement, ranging from the general to very practical proposals for increased anonymity and on-line tools for bibliography improvement.
Here is a PDF file that has all contributions in one place. We will surely have future entries on this topic, which will all be collected under the tag Gender Gap. Below are hyperlinks to all contributions. I hope that you have found the symposium engaging.
Introducing the Monkey Cage gender gap symposium Erik Voeten
Explaining the gender gap Jane Mansbridge
How to reduce the gender gap in one (relatively) easy step B.F. Walter
Closing the gender citation gap: Introducing RADS Daniel Maliniak and Ryan Powers
Why it matters that more women present at conferences Sara McLaughlin Mitchell
Student evaluations of teaching are probably biased. Does it matter? Lisa Martin
The gender gap from the gatekeeper’s perspective Rick Wilson
Editors and the gender gap Marijke Breuning
Why is work by women systematically devalued? Brett Ashley Leeds
Gender bias in professional networks and citations David Lake
The gender citations gap: A glass half-full perspective Beth Simmons