
Scholarly Publishing's Gender Gap - Jun8
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Hard-Numbers-Behind/135236/
======
guard-of-terra
"Men talking about mathematical proofs, about a South Park episode on
evolution, about their latest mountain-climbing adventures.

"The lab is like visiting a fraternity,""

This is seriously disgusting. Imagine an article when a male journalist writes
upon visiting some research faculty that "it is like visiting a sorority". I
imagine there would be a serious torrent of anger from the defenders of
whatever rights. That journalist will be immediately labeled as a biased
chauvinist.

However, when a woman visits a lab and tells us that it is like visiting a
fraternity, it's somehow okay. Obviously there is something discrediting in
climbing or watching the (award winning) South Park.

To clarify: I (as many and many Hacker News readers) am male and happen to
work in mostly male environment, but it does not feel like a fraternity. In
fact, it feels like a place where grown-up intelligent people do creative
work. And yes, we occassionally do discuss climbing and TV series. And no,
there is nothing wrong about that.

~~~
jamesbritt
What's odd is the implication that if you went to a sorority (or some other
all, or mostly, women enclave) women would not be taking about mathematical
proofs, or a South Park episode on evolution, or about their latest mountain-
climbing adventures.

~~~
Goladus
I don't see that implication.

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yummyfajitas
One explanation of why women might publish less than men do is, as you might
expect, completely ignored by the article: discrimination.

Consider a simple model in which, to become a professor, you must have at
least 10 pts - you get 1 pt from a first-author publication and half a point
from a second-author publication. Suppose further that the process is biased
and women get 2 points simply for being a woman.

In such a model, you'd expect women to have about 2 fewer first-author or 4
fewer second-author (or some linear combination) publications than men.

I.e., women might have fewer publications because discrimination in their
favor allows them to publish less to achieve the same position.

This is the straightforward economics explanation, although of course academic
employment is hardly the epitome of an efficient market.

~~~
trhtrsh
Only if you have data (or blindly assume) that women at some level of "the
career ladder" have fewer publications than men at the same level.

~~~
yummyfajitas
You are correct, this could also be entirely a compositional effect. I.e.,
women in academia might also be be on average younger than men, and hence have
fewer publications.

There are a lot of possible explanations. Ultimately we need data on the
authors as well as the publications to know what's really going on.

------
tibbon
The thing that jumps out at me as a question from this data is why some sub-
topics/specialties of a subject have such a huge range? Some things make
sense. Lots of women write papers on Sociology/Gender, and this doesn't shock
me in the least since I think more women consider gender issues over men who
have the privilege of not needing to think about it (which is part of the
problem). Culturally, we push women to studying things that are family,
children and fertility related as well (and push men away from them)- and
these are present in the numbers.

Yet under Law, you've got only 8% of papers on Antitrust by women, but 34.6%
on legal oversight and regulation. It clear isn't that there are no women in
law, but something has influenced them to study different things in the larger
subject of law.

Similarly- Mycology has 57.1% of the papers on Yeast with authorship, but 7.7%
on Zygospores. What makes yeast more equitable than zygospores? Again, it
isn't that women aren't in mycology, but for some reason are studying
different things it seems.

And for mathematics; 24.3% for Lie Algebras, and 4.5% for Oscillation
Criteria. I honestly don't know what either of those are, but they don't
appear to be particularly gendered sub-topics/specialities in math. I
understand that culturally we push young women away from some subjects, but
I've never heard someone intone that a woman shouldn't do oscillation criteria
or automorphic forms in math, or encourage algebraic groups instead?

(Numbers above looking at first author)

Clearly, there is a gap. This is a problem. I'd just like to know more about
the causation on more of the stranger gaps.

~~~
tjic
> Clearly, there is a gap. This is a problem.

I grant you your first point.

...but that doesn't remotely prove your second point, which you've just
asserted.

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trhtrsh
Powerful tangent, stolen from Dan Knoepfle posting at Quora:

=============

What's in a Surname? The Effects of Surname Initials on Academic Success,
Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20(1), Winter 2006, 175-188 (available here:
<http://www.stanford.edu/~leinav/pubs/JEP2006.pdf>)

In short, they find that it's better to have a name starting with a letter
early in the alphabet, and that authors with names starting with letters late
in the alphabet are less likely to collaborate with more than one other person
(and end up in the et alia part of the citation).

==============

When I was a kid, I new a friend's dad who spoke of the important of marrying
well: into a higher position in the alphabet. Miss Z~~~~~ would have no
trouble improving her lot in life.

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trhtrsh
> the prestigious last-author position,

The what?

[http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-significance-of-the-
orderin...](http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-significance-of-the-ordering-of-
author-names-on-an-academic-paper)

(Wow, Quora being useful.)

I did not know that.

