Men Forget About Female Researchers, Says Study On Gender Citation Gap

In the field of psychology, studies have shown a citation gap, where the research contributions of men are referenced more often than those of women. A new study offers a potential explanation for the discrepancy—male researchers forget about women’s contributions.

Despite representing two-thirds of psychology faculty members, women’s academic contributions are cited less often than men’s—with papers featuring women as first or last authors receiving around 30% fewer citations than those with men as first or last authors.

The new study, “I Forgot That You Existed: Role of Memory Accessibility in the Gender Citation Gap,” published in American Psychologist suggests that male professors’ publications might receive more citations because men more readily recall their male colleagues’ work.

In the study, the researchers asked psychology professors at top-tier research universities to list up to five experts in their area of study. Overall, female researchers were listed less frequently than male researchers.

Further analyses revealed who was most likely to recall male experts versus female experts in their lists. “The underrepresentation of women researchers was entirely driven by men,” the researchers write. In other words, women recalled male and female colleagues at the same rate, but men predominantly listed other men.

Also interesting was the order in which the professors listed the experts. Men were more likely to include women later in their lists, but women did not vary in the order in which they listed women versus men. “This suggests that for men, female researchers were available in their memory but simply were not as accessible as male researchers,” the authors write.

Why do men have difficulty calling to mind women’s contributions? Science tends to be stereotyped as a male domain. Studies have shown that when you ask someone to draw a scientist, you typically get a picture of a man. Similarly, attributes like brilliance and excellence are also associated with men. When male professors were considering who to list as experts, these stereotypes were likely activated, resulting in the recall of male experts in their field.

Other research has also found that people are more likely to remember things consistent with stereotypes. This happens unconsciously, so it’s not likely the men are intentionally overlooking women.

Nonetheless, the lack of citations likely impacts the careers of female academics. “Citations play a large role in crucial career decisions, such as hiring and tenure status, and continue to affect a researcher’s prestige over the course of their career,” the researchers explain in the paper. In addition, the marginalization of women’s research is bad for science. It means a substantial body of work is neglected, and the field is potentially missing out on unique insights and diverse perspectives.

It’s important to note that men’s work isn’t cited more because their research is of higher quality than women’s. Veronica Yan, a professor at The University of Texas at Austin and lead author of the study, explains, “There’s little empirical evidence to support the claim that men’s work is simply better or more worthy of citation. There is, however, a wealth of empirical evidence showing there exist gender biases in judgment and decision-making in academia and beyond. The hopeful message from our data is that women do not show the bias at all—the bias we found was driven by men. Moreover, the patterns seem to be changing with younger researchers, and there was even evidence of the reverse bias for younger women.”

Although this study examined academics in psychology, other fields face similar problems. For example, research shows that the gender citation imbalance in the field of neuroscience is driven mainly by male authors. In political science, they’ve even named the phenomenon. The “Matthew Effect” occurs when men’s research is viewed as the most central and important in a field. By contrast, the “Matilda effect” is when women’s research is valued less than men’s or their ideas are attributed to male scholars.

Yan believes that the research findings generalize beyond academia. “Our project started as a way of examining the citation gap, but it isn’t only about the citation gap. Our results highlight the biases in who comes to mind when one thinks about excellence. These biases can affect the ways in which we raise people up and give them platforms—for example, when thinking about who to invite for a talk, who to nominate for fellowships and awards.”

“It will be interesting to check back in a decade. Ideally, we see that there is no more gender bias in either direction,” Yan adds.