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Publishing While Female: are Women Held to Higher Standards? Evidence from Peer Review

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  • Erin Hengel

Abstract

Female authors are under-represented in top economics journals. In this paper, I investigate whether higher writing standards contribute to the problem. I find that (i) female-authored papers are 1%–6% better written than equivalent papers by men; (ii) the gap widens during peer review; (iii) women improve their writing as they publish more papers (but men do not); (iv) female-authored papers take longer under review. Using a subjective expected utility framework, I argue that higher writing standards for women are consistent with these stylised facts. A counterfactual analysis suggests that senior female economists may, as a result, write at least 5% more clearly than they otherwise would. As a final exercise, I show tentative evidence that women adapt to biased treatment in ways that may disguise it as voluntary choice.

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  • Erin Hengel, 2022. "Publishing While Female: are Women Held to Higher Standards? Evidence from Peer Review," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(648), pages 2951-2991.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:econjl:v:132:y:2022:i:648:p:2951-2991.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ej/ueac032
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Schmal, W. Benedikt & Haucap, Justus & Knoke, Leon, 2023. "The role of gender and coauthors in academic publication behavior," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(10).
    2. Kong, Nancy & Dulleck, Uwe & Jaffe, Adam B. & Sun, Shupeng & Vajjala, Sowmya, 2023. "Linguistic metrics for patent disclosure: Evidence from university versus corporate patents," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(2).
    3. Ronald B. Davies & Zuzanna Studnicka, 2023. "A review of submissions to International Tax and Public Finance, 2010–2020," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 30(4), pages 1185-1201, August.
    4. Anna Costello & Ekaterina Fedorova & Zhijing Jin & Rada Mihalcea, 2022. "Editing a Woman's Voice," Papers 2212.02581, arXiv.org, revised May 2023.
    5. Babin, J. Jobu & Hussey, Andrew, 2023. "Gender penalties and solidarity — Teaching evaluation differentials in and out of STEM," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    6. Sebastian Hager & Carlo Schwarz & Fabian Waldinger, 2023. "Measuring Science: Performance Metrics and the Allocation of Talent," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 455, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    7. Audinga Baltrunaite & Alessandra Casarico & Lucia Rizzica, 2024. "Women in economics: the role of gendered references at entry in the profession," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1438, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    8. Anna Matysiak & Agnieszka Kasperska & Ewa Cukrowska-Torzewska, 2023. "Mechanisms Underlying the Effects of Work From Home on Careers in the Post-Covid Context," Working Papers 2023-28, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    9. Ahrens, Achim & Hansen, Christian B. & Schaffer, Mark E & Wiemann, Thomas, 2024. "Model Averaging and Double Machine Learning," IZA Discussion Papers 16714, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Sangeeta Bansal & Brinda Viswanathan & J. V. Meenakshi, 2023. "Does research performance explain the “leaky pipeline” in Indian academia? A study of agricultural and applied economics," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 54(2), pages 274-288, March.
    11. Sona Badalyan & Darya Korlyakova & Rastislav Rehak, 2023. "Disclosure Discrimination: An Experiment Focusing on Communication in the Hiring Process," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp743, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    12. Lawson, Nicholas, 2023. "What citation tests really tell us about bias in academic publishing," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    13. Zhang, Lin & Qi, Fan & Sivertsen, Gunnar & Liang, Liming & Campbell, David, 2023. "Gender differences in the patterns and consequences of changing specialization in scientific careers," SocArXiv ep5bx, Center for Open Science.
    14. Piera Bello & Alessandra Casarico & Debora Nozza, 2023. "Research Similarity and Women in Academia," CESifo Working Paper Series 10657, CESifo.
    15. Fulya Y. Ersoy & Jennifer Pate, 2023. "Invisible hurdles: Gender and institutional differences in the evaluation of economics papers," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(4), pages 777-797, October.

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