Progress and challenges in narrowing the gender publication gap and parity

What is it about?

Building on research about women's representation in academia, we looked at three important questions. First, is the gap in publication rates between men and women getting smaller (are women publishing as much as men now)? Second, when will women's publication rates equal those of men (when will women publish as many articles as their numbers in the field suggest they should)? Third, how is this gap changing for lead authorships (women being the first author)? We analyzed data from 11,097 researchers who wrote 7,357 articles in eight management journals from 2002 to 2020. Our results show that the publication gap is shrinking because women's publication rates are growing faster than men's. For instance, if women's publication rates doubled, men's would only grow by 1.46 times. Scenario-based analyses indicate that parity has been achieved or is close in most micro journals, but macro journals still lag behind. Additionally, women are lead authors more often than their numbers in the field would suggest, especially in articles with multiple coauthors. We use a framework that looks at situational constraints to explain these findings and integrate various explanations for the observed gaps.

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