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Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Sex Differences in Citations among South
African Invasion Ecologists, 1990-2005
Heidi E ProzeskyLecturer, Stellenbosch University
Paper presented at: Conference on the Politics of Knowing: Research,
Institutions and Gender Prague, Czech Republic, 27-28 November 2008
Introduction
• One cannot address the issue of women’s participation in science without taking into account gender variations in research performance
• Number of papers (output volume or “quantity”)
• Number of citations (impact, recognition, or “quality”)
• The “quality” criterion as a gender issue in science
• Research objective:
• Analysing sex differences in citations to South African authored scientific journal contributions published within the field of invasion ecology
Literature review
• There are very few citation differences between men and women
• Differences are largely a function of aggregate differences between men and women in terms of publication rate (and/or other variables)
• “If females publish at parity with males and maintained their level of citation per paper, they would have significantly more citations than males” (Long 1992)
• Two studies report women outperforming men in terms of citations
• But: there is an effect of gender on the likelihood of being highly cited
Shortcomings to be addressed
• Gender representation among the most-cited, in proportion to gender representation in field
• Classification of papers by the sex composition of author sets
• The field of invasion ecology is characterized by a high level of multiple authorship, which problematise the notion of “women’s” and “men’s” articles
• Taking into account (particularly first) author position
Methodology
• Invasion ecology as one of the few niche areas of demonstrated excellence in SA (highly competitive, “hot” field)
• Data collection
• 359 articles selected from SA Knowledgebase
• 830 SA authorships with known gender
• Citations as an indicator of quality?
• “no universal consensus that they would truly represent scientific quality has materialized as yet” (Sonnert 1995)
• Pragmatic approach: If research managers define citations as real, they are real in their consequences (Thomas theorem)
Results (1a): Gender composition of author sets
(unit of analysis: articles)
• To be expected, on the basis of women’s under-representation in the field in general
Results (1b): Gender composition of author sets and citations
• Articles written predominantly/only by women are more higly represented among those attracting a relatively low no. of c.p.a.
• 10 most highly cited articles (<11 c.p.a.): all co-authored
• 4 by men only
• None by women only
Results (2): The relationship between gender, author position, and citation frequency
(unit of analysis: authorships)
Results (2): The relationship between gender, author position, and citation frequency (cont.)
• Women are slightly more likely than men to be 1st authors
• Women as first authors attract substantially less citations (1.1 c.p.a.) than men (1.8 c.p.a) in the same author position
• None of the 1st authors of the 10 most-highly cited articles are women
• Women are proportionately more likely to be 1st authors of articles that have as yet attracted no citations
Interpretation and conclusions
• In a highly competitive and prestigious field, women’s output (although small in terms of quantity) is not marginal, but is cited by others
• The inclusion of women in an author set tends to have a negative, rather than a positive effect on the impact an article has on the field
• Possible reasons? – for discussion
• Women are definitely not relegated to the back of the author list, but do attract less citations as 1st authors than men do
• A case of ‘token’ first authorship on papers judged to be routine?
Acknowledgements
• Center for Research on Science and Technology (CREST) at the US, for the use of SA Knowledgebase data
• DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Invasion Biology (CIB)
• Assistance in data collection
• Funding for research assistance
• Research assistants
• Charlize Mouton
• Marion van Dorssen
• Christopher Mechnig