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