Copernicus was a woman!

‘Copernicus was a woman!’

‘Copernicus was a woman!’Gender misattributions in citations

Magdalena SmykMichał Krawczyk

GendEQU projectFaculty of Economic Sciences

University of Warsaw

March 9, 2015


Introduction

The case of IFLS

One of the most popular science pages on Facebook: ‘I F*****g LoveScience’:

19 904 998 likes (28/02/2015)daily publishes several posts on scientific achievements - mainly from thefield of physics and natural sciences (but sometimes also social sciences andhumanities)

...and is run by a woman

Elise Andrew - the founder of IFLS blog - revealed her identity (and hergender) two years ago. Thousands of comments from shocked IFLS fansfollowed

Tyler Linson: ‘I had no idea you were a female.... damn thats hot hahaha’Pierre Rodriguez: ‘I had an intuition not to take the posts [on IFLS]seriously...’


Introduction

The case of IFLS


19 904 998 likes (28/02/2015)daily publishes several posts on scientific achievements - mainly from thefield of physics and natural sciences (but sometimes also social sciences andhumanities)...and is run by a woman




Introduction

The case of IFLS


19 904 998 likes (28/02/2015)daily publishes several posts on scientific achievements - mainly from thefield of physics and natural sciences (but sometimes also social sciences andhumanities)...and is run by a woman




Introduction

Women in science and stereotype - the IFLS owner case

Elise Andrew’s reaction:

Do people still identify science with men only?


Introduction

Motivation - a pilot for another study

we asked students to evaluate instructions to be used in an experiment

the study concerns correlation between scientific paper author’s genderand evaluation of its quality

we used phrases: ‘rate her competence’ / ‘rate his competence’

the subjects were asked to draw a scientist they had to rate

we wanted to know if the subjects would register and remembre gender ofthe person they were supposed to rate


Introduction

Motivation - a pilot for another study


Introduction

Few errors, rather in favor of men

instructions: woman man totaldrawings:woman 18 2 20man 6 22 28? 5 7 12total 31 29 60


Introduction

Literature on gender-science stereotype

Mead, Metraux [1957]:subjects: high-school studentstask: write an essay "what do you think about science and scientists?"result: over 90% described being scientist as a carrier for man

Chambers [1983]:subjects: preschool childrentask: Draw-A-Scientist Testresult: only 28 on 4000 kids drew a woman

Liu et al. [2010]:subjects: high-school students (China)result: gender-science stereotype was stronger in science classes (withadvanced physics or mathematics program)

Losh [2010]:subjects: adults (American)task: a surveyresult: ‘scientist is a workaholic male’

Nosek et al. [2009]: Implicit Association Test (psychological test designedto reveal unconscious preferences)


Introduction

Possible effects of the stereotype

Female achievements and ideas ascribed to male scientists (Mathildaeffect)

Female scientists considered less qualified than their male colleagues

Female scientists considered less attractive as women

Women less often start scientific carrier and more often give up


Introduction

Unreliable citations

Draw-A-Scientist and IAT studies confirm gender-science stereotype – dowe find the same result in observational data?

Important role of citations in the academic carrier

Frequent errors in citations (Eichorn and Yankauer, 1987)

Citations are connected not only with the quality of the paper (Bornmannand Daniel, 2008)

Some studies show that female-authored papers are less often cited(Davenport and Snyder, 1995), some do not support this view (Budden etal., 2009; Powell et al., 2009)

If we cite an article, do we assume that the author is male?


Our study

What comes more frequently: female authors being cited as if they weremales or vice versa?

1. Articles

2. Master theses

3. Eponymous laws, tests etc. on the Internet


Our study

Articles

Study 1 - design

Selection of the articles

we are looking for one-author papers only

we want ca. half of them to be written by women (so we are collectingonly one in five male-authored papers)

we use first names of the authors: the most popular male and female firstnames from 1990 US census

only articles with the phrase ‘the author’ (multi-authored papers areexcluded thanks to that)

only papers with at least 100 citations

without authors with double surnames, typical female surnames(Kowalska) or male suffices (Jr)

seven fields of study


Our study

Articles

Study 1 - citing articles

ArticlesThe cases of misattribution:

for each paper we search for citing papers

in the text: surname of a female author + he/his orsurname of a male author + she/her at most 10 words apart

verification if the pronoun is in fact referring to ‘our’ author

we also search for the cases of correct gender attribution for the authorswith at least one mistake – by gender of the citing authors(female/male/mixed)

and correct attribution of randomly drawn papers for papers without anymisattributions.


Our study

Articles

Study 1 - results

Articles

only 66 misattribution cases in 2893 cited articles

female authors treated as male authors much more often than the otherway around: 1.16% vs. 0.04%

authorbroad field male femalebiology/medicine 0 1

(283) (133)economics/business 1 15

(340) (197)physics/chemistry/engineering 0 7

(652) (102)social science/humanities and arts 2 30

(478) (708)the total number of citable papers checked in the parentheses


Our study

Articles

Study 1 - results

Impact of field of study, publication year and number of citations on probabilityof misattribution - probit analysis

mistake β ε z P > |z |broad field:econ/bus .905 .387 2.34 0.019phys./chem./engi. .867 .410 2.11 0.035social sc., arts, hum. .636 .372 1.71 0.087

citations .0011 .0003 3.57 0.000citations2 -1.99e-07 9.43e-08 -2.10 0.035year .004 .005 0.69 0.489cons -10.427 11.167 -0.93 0.350N 1139LR χ2(6) 35.21Prob > χ2 0.0000Log likelihood -196.723Pseudo R2 0.082


Our study

Articles

Study 1 - results

Gender of the citing author does not affect the probability of misattribution

field F M F&Mmist. freq (attr.) mist. freq (attr.) mist. freq (attr.)

bio/ med 0.25 (4) 0 (7) 0 (3)econ/ bus 0.11 (37) 0.08 (102) 0.13 (32)phys./chem./engi. 0.05 (22) 0.07 (70) 0.24 (21)social sc./ arts/ hum. 0.07 (168) 0.11 (133) 0.08 (83)total 0.08 (231) 0.09 (312) 0.12 (139)


Our study

Articles

Study 1

Articles - conclusion

very low number of gender misattributions in comparison to the number ofarticles analyzed

...and in comparison to the total number of attributions (correct andincorrect)

(partially, because it is very easy to avoid gender attribution in English)

mistakes appear more often in articles from the fields of humanities andsocial sciences than in natural science or engineering papers

almost all mistakes involve ascribing male gender to female authors


Our study

Master theses

Study 2 - procedure

Master theses

in Polish grammar forms depend strongly on gender of the noun

we selected master theses in psychology (mostly written in Polish, withrelatively long list of references, many of which correspond to femaleauthors, suitable citation manner - surnames of cited authors provided inthe text (rather than numbers in brackets)

100 master theses defended recently at the Faculty of Psychology (UW)

we analyzed manually every citation to identify mistakes


Our study

Master theses

Study 2 - procedure

Four types of possible misattribution

incorrect surname form (np. “Badania Holland, Hendriksa i Aarts z 2005”)

incorrect verb form

pronouns - she/he, his/her

female or male noun form


Our study

Master theses

Study 2 - results

Misattribution was observed more often when the real gender of the author wasfemale - probit

mistake β ε z P > |z |cited author: female .766 .331 2.32 .021citing author: male - .015 .169 - .08 .933citing male and cited female - .634 .348 -1.82 0.068cons -1.205 .068 -17.74 0.000N 1209LR χ2(4) 9.79Prob > χ2 0.0441Log likelihood -475.062Pseudo R2 0.0102


Our study

Master theses

Study 2 - results (n=1292 attributions)

Men more often than women misattribute gender of (female) authors


Our study

Master theses

Study 2 - results (n=100 theses)

The effect is significant even if we are treating one thesis as one observation ()

on average men misattribute 42% of cited female authors, women 16.7%(p = .03)

no significant difference in misattributing male gender (ok. 7%)

the most common mistake: form of the surname - so in the case ofmisattributing male gender it can be an effect of laziness or not knowingthe correct form


Our study

The Internet

Study 3 - inspiration and procedure

Ljung-Box test

one of the popular statistical tests is named after Greta Ljung and GeorgeBox

in Polish texts ‘test Ljunga-Boxa’ is more popular than the correctform:‘test Ljung-Boxa’

Study

we collect eponymous concepts named after female and male scientists (ormixed gender teams)

we match each “female” concept with a “male” one

and check correct and incorrect hits of the concept name on the Internet

we also check who makes mistakes - non-professionals or specialists?women or men?


Our study

The Internet

Study 3 - procedure

References on the Internet - procedure

Concepts named after author or inventor (lists):

laws (wikipedia: list of eponymous laws)

medical signs (wikipedia: list of eponymously named medical signs)

‘scientific phenomena’ - effects, scales, rules, theories, etc. (wikipedia:scientific phenomena named after people)

surgical eponymous tests, symptoms etc. (surgeons.org.uk)

economics eponymous laws etc. (from ‘An Eponymous Dictionary ofEconomics’)

diseases (wikipedia: list of eponymously named diseases)


Our study

The Internet

Study 3 - procedure

References on the Internet - procedure

Who makes mistakes?

non-professionals

students

journalists

scientists/doctors (specialists)

References on the Internet - sample size

at least 100 hits for each concept

if number of references is n > 100 - we check every n/100effect of lazinesslink

we exclude surnames whose declension is not gender-specific and conceptsnamed after woman and man with the same surname


Our study

The Internet

Study 3 - results (study in progress)

References on the Internet - so far . . .

22 concepts checked

10 named after one personLjung - Box test result:

90 hits of ‘test Ljunga-Boxa’ and only 15 of correct formincorrect form: mainly used by experts (scientists, mathematicians,economists)


Our study

The Internet

Study 3 - results (study in progress)

References on the Internet - results

indicator of concept masculinization: (number of ‘female turned male’incorrect hits - number of ‘male turned female’ incorrect hits )/number ofconcept authors

in total sample indicator of concept masculinization is on average -0.037 -so mistakes are made in a favor of women,

but if the concept appears in the text written by a man - average indicatoris positive (0.035)


Our study

The Internet

Study 3 - results (preliminary)

Who uses incorrect forms?

Obs Mean Std Err. Min Maxnon-professionals 15 -.065 .262 -.667 .308students 20 0.03 .308 -.571 .538journalists 17 -.04 .237 -.667 .25experts 20 -.022 .277 -.526 .5

Looking on average indicators:

‘male to female’ mistakes are more popular

students are the only group with positive indicator (higher number od‘female to male’ than ‘male to female’ mistakes)

But the standard errors are huge...


Conclusions

To wrap up...

Study 1:in scientific articles gender misattributions are very rarewhen they happen - it is rather in fields with relatively stronger position(larger number) of female researchers (humanities and social sciences)it is much more often that male gender is attributed to a female authorthan other way around - but the sample is really smallgender of the citing author is irrelevant

Study 2:in master theses female authors are slightly more likely to be ascribed themale gender than other way aroundand this difference is mostly due to males frequently misciting femaleauthors

Study 3:(preliminary results) misattributions rather in favor of women...but the result might be due to laziness in using male surname formmore data required

To summarize, a new method provided new evidence in the discussion ongender-science stereotype


Conclusions

To wrap up...






Conclusions

To wrap up...






Conclusions

Thank you for your attention!

Education

Copernicus was a woman!