A Fresh Look at the Publication and Citation Gap Between Men and Women: Insights from Economics and Political Science

In recent years, significant efforts have been made to attract more women into academia and to support their careers, with the goal of increasing their representation. Using novel data for economics and political science, collected through web-scraping the corresponding departments of the top 50 universities worldwide, we document three key findings: (i) female scholars, on average, publish less and receive fewer citations than their male counterparts; (ii) this gap is smaller at junior ranks in both disciplines; and (iii) the gap decreases in departments with a higher proportion of female scholars, particularly in political science, where female faculty representation is generally higher compared to economics. Gaps do not differ significantly by field in economics, where a substantial proportion of women are concentrated in microeconomic subfields. Overall, our results underscore a persistent publication and citation gap between men and women in both disciplines, primarily driven by full professors, while suggesting that this gap diminishes in departments with greater sex balance among faculty.