Women experts thought of less often vs. men when considering ‘rising stars’ in medicine
Key takeaways:
- Researchers observed a much lower proportion of female faculty recalled by men vs. women.
- Female experts overrepresented other women when asked to think of “rising stars” in the field.
Male researchers thought of female experts less often than their male counterparts when asked to list the experts and rising stars in their field, according to study results published in American Psychologist.
“In general, we found an underrepresentation of women experts, particularly among male researchers and those who had received their PhDs less recently. Our findings show that the gender bias is narrowing, albeit still lagging in the demographics of the field,” Veronica X. Yan, PhD, associate professor in the department of educational psychology at The University of Texas at Austin College of Education, told Healio.
Assessing the gap
The idea for this study came from reading about the gender citation gap in psychology in a 2020 study by Odic and colleagues, also published in American Psychologist, according to Yan.
“We became interested in trying to understand the potential reasons why this citation gap could occur. One hypothesis we came up with is that it may be a difference in who comes to mind,” she said. “An interesting aspect to this is that we sought to examine the bias in a specialty that in many ways may be considered female dominated.
“For example, within the past 10 years, 75% of doctoral degrees in psychology have been conferred to women,” she said. “Go into any undergraduate psychology class and it is mostly women. But introductory psychology textbooks and curriculum continue to be filled with ‘classic’ studies that are mostly carried out by men. This is mainly due to academia historically being male dominated, which is still reflected among those in the ranks of full professor [42% women] and emeritus professor [28% women].”
Among assistant professors, however, there are more women than men, Yan added.
“So, here is also a field where gender representation has changed substantially within the past decades,” she said. “We wanted to also capture how these shifts impact how people think about experts and rising stars in the field.”
Yan and colleagues sought to examine the potential reason for the gender citation gap — the fact that male researchers are more likely to come to mind than female researchers.
They distributed a survey to faculty from psychology departments across R1 institutions in the U.S. in which faculty listed up to five names they considered experts in their field and up to five names they considered rising stars (pre-tenure) in their field.
Observed differences
Results showed that the proportion of female experts recalled by women generally matched the percentage of more senior female faculty across R1 institutions. Conversely, researchers observed a much lower proportion of female faculty recalled by men.
Results also showed the underrepresentation of women from male participants and overrepresentation of women from female participants among “rising stars” in the field vs. more junior female faculty.
Moreover, male names for both experts and rising stars appeared more likely to be generated earlier in lists by men, whereas “women did not vary in the order in which they listed women vs. men.”
Of note, results did not show a gap in name recognition among men vs. women experts and rising stars, indicating that the gender citation gap is associated with who comes to mind, according to the researchers.
“The silver lining in our findings is that the male bias is attenuated when male researchers were asked to name rising stars and when the researchers themselves are relatively junior,” Yan said. “Further, we did not find the male-bias in the recall lists of our female participants. In fact, the women in our study overrepresented other women when asked to think of the rising stars — women were uplifting other women.”
Implications
There are many implications of the findings, according to Yan.
“First, we don’t believe that we have any evidence that male participants were deliberately ignoring or suppressing women. Rather, our results speak to the very human implicit biases that we are all subject to, especially if we aren’t paying attention to the issue,” she said. “Not being aware of a bias doesn’t mean that it doesn’t affect others. Indeed, who comes to mind as an expert can have large downstream consequences — who gets cited, who is invited as a speaker, who gets presented with opportunities, who gets selected for awards or jobs, etc. There are gender biases built into the system that then amplifies it.”
Yan said future research should examine other factors, including race and ethnicity, that intersect with gender in important ways.
“It is also interesting to think of how technologies might be developed to circumvent human implicit biases rather than enshrining existing biases,” she said.
References:
- Odic D, et al. Am Psychol. 2020;doi:10.1037/amp0000480.
- Yan VX, et al. Am Psychol. 2024;doi:10.1037/amp0001299.
For more information:
Veronica X. Yan, PhD, can be reached at veronicayan@austin.utexas.edu.
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