Summary of the article The future of women in psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science - Gruber et al. - 2020
Even though women are represented as a large and growing proportion of today’s psychological scientists and leadership positions, there are still gender gaps. For example, the women who are in scientific positions publish less, are cited less, get fewer grants, and are less likely to be represented in the field’s most important roles. They also do not earn comparable to men. Sometimes women psychology professors and instructors are asked to perform less valued roles in their department, and they may also be judged more negatively by students and trainees, compared to men.
Psychology is not the only field in which there are gender gaps in careers. However, there are two distinct characteristics of the gender gap in psychology. Why? Well, psychology is a field about human behavior and behavior change. Therefore, it is in a unique position to confront the issue. Thus, effective change in the field of psychology can have the potential to create change for women in the broader academic community. Furthermore, in psychology, there is a greater percentage of women in the early career stages compared to other fields. Later, there is an imbalance in the opposite direction in later career phases. Thus, the examination of gender gaps in psychology may help to gain insight into the reasons for this balance ‘flip’.
Unfortunately, there is no systematic summary of factors that contribute to gender gaps in career outcomes, nor are there suggestions for how to understand and eliminate the gaps.
In this article, the authors have three goals. First, they try to raise awareness of the remaining gender gaps in psychological science in the domains of career advancement, financial compensation, and service. They also highlight where there are no gaps anymore. Second, they try to identify mechanisms which help to explain why there are still gender gaps in some domains. These are then areas that research and interventions could focus on. They do this by means of three levels of analysis: systemic/structural factors within the broader culture that affect the different roles that men and women occupy; interpersonal factors that affect the degree to which women’s contributions are recognized and respected by others in the field, and; intrapersonal factors that shape women’s choices and behaviors. Challenges at any of these levels are likely to exist within psychology. Some departments or programs are doing good in creating a culture of inclusion, while others do not. Third, the authors suggest ways in which existing gender-based gaps can be reduced.
Issue 1: Career advancement
As noted, women are overrepresented in psychology at the undergraduate level, thus there are more female students than male students. In early career stages there is an equal representation. At senior faculty levels, women are underrepresented. Thus, as women progress in their career, there is less career success such as publications, citations, grants, and other indicators of success. There are five sub-issues related to career advancement:
- Training and tenure-track positions
- Promotion and tenure rates
- Publication and citation rates
- Grant submission and receipt
- Markers of scholarly eminence
Training and tenure-track positions
After female students graduate, they are less likely to apply for tenure-track positions in psychology compared to men, and they are overrepresented among adjunct professors and university administrators. Recently, when women apply for tenure-track jobs, they are equally or more hired than men. Single women without children in psychology programs are 8.7% more likely than single men without children to obtain a tenure-track job within 6 years of receiving a PhD. In the last two decades, a similar trend is observable across science, engineering, and mathematics. In sum, women appear to do well with regard to completing doctoral degrees and obtaining tenure-track faculty positions, if they apply for them, compared to men.
Promotion and tenure rates
Historical gender gaps in promotion and tenure rates are closing in psychology in recent years. For example, Ginther and Kahn (2014) found no gender differences in tenure rates for social-science faculty members who completed their doctoral degrees after 1999. Psychology thus appears to do well and maybe even better than other fields in closing the gender gap in early career advancement. However, there remains a gap between the number of women and men represented in post-tenure careers in psychological sciences. Data shows that women remain underrepresented at the more senior career phases, including the rank of ‘full professor’. One interpretation of this reduction in more senior women is that of a ‘leaky pipeline’. This means that women leave the field at higher rates compared to men as they progress to more senior phases of their careers. Another interpretation is that the narrowing of gender differences in early-career phases has not yet had time for those women to reach more senior career phases. This underscores the need for greater longitudinal as well as cross-sectional and generational research on this topic. A third interpretation is that there are gender differences in factors that relate to career advancement. This latter is discussed next.
Publication and citation rates
Studies have shown that there are gender differences in both publication as well as citation rates between male and female scientists, even though the gap in publishing rates has narrowed over time. For example, it seems that women publish less than men overall, and women are less often listed in leadership roles as first or last author compared to men. Further, for every published article found, the first author was two times more likely to be a man than to be a woman. During the current coronavirus pandemic, it seems that gender gaps in publication rates are more apparent. This underscores the need for future research to examine the impact of the seismic shifts in work-family life, acute stress, and financial instability on publication rates for women compared to men. In psychology, there is also a gender gap in publication rates. The largest gap is in sensation and perception, and neuroscience. In clinical and health psychology, there is no gap. In developmental psychology, women are overrepresented (60%). Thus, these numbers are based on differences in gender base rates across subdisciplines. However, regardless of discipline, studies have shown that the prevalence of women authors declines linearly as the journals’ impact factor increases. One of the largest gender gaps was in review journals: only 30% of first authors were women.
Citation rates and h indices are important metrics for a researcher’s impact, and there remain significant gender gaps in both of these metrics. For example, within psychology, men’s articles are cited 1.3 times more often than women’s articles. Also, women’s h indices are 4.5 points lower, regardless of age or career stage. This is not only due to higher base rates of articles published by men compared to women! Odic and Wojcik (2019) found that even when women do publish in top-tier review journals, their work is cited less frequently than men’s work. This is especially true when women are single authors. So remember that the differences in citation rates are not only attributable to productivity differences (men write more articles and are cited more)! What may be a contributor to the observed gender differences is gender differences in self-citation. Men cite themselves 56% more often than women do.
In sum, men publish about 50% more articles compared to women. Also, their articles are cited more often than females’. The h indices in neuroscience, biology, and evolutionary science are predicted by number of publications, publishing in top journals, and the number of distinct journals in which one has published. Thus, gender gaps in publication numbers may limit women’s impact on the field. It remains unclear as to why women publish less on average than men. This will be discussed next.
Grant submission and receipt
Success in psychological science can also be indicated by grant funding. There are gender gaps in the biomedical and health sciences, which favor women in the early stages of one’s career. Across disciplines, women apply for and hold only a third of Research Project Grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). There are no gender differences for first-time grant recipients. There isn’t evidence for that the content of women’s grants are reviewed more negatively than men’s, but women still fare worse in grant outcomes if reviewers are asked to overweigh the qualities of the researchers over the quality of the proposed research. In one study, gender differences emerged only when ratings of the principal investigators were more heavily weighted than ratings of the science proposed. In another study, it was shown that men were more likely than women to be described as ‘leaders’ in reviews. This is probably because men are more productive, because studies have found no evidence for gender bias in grant reviews. In sum, women are less likely than men to apply for grants, and they are also less likely to apply for renewals. When women do apply for grants, they receive them equally often as men, but only when reviewers evaluate the perceived quality of the project and not the scientist behind the project.
Eminence
Eminence is defined by career progression, publication rates, high-impact publication venues, and grants. Eminence can have explicit outcomes (who is seen as important or influential) as well as implicit outcomes (who is selected for awards and who is invited to give talks). There appear to be clear gender differences in eminence within psychological science in both of these outcomes. For example, in a list of 100 most eminent psychologists of modern time, there were only 14 women cited. There has been no systematic summary of gender differences in career awards.
What can be concluded on Issue 1?
In sum, women are being hired for tenure-track careers at equal or even greater rates than men. However, at senior levels, men are overrepresented. This appears to be due to history and the fact that women’s careers are characterized by fewer markers of research productivity, such as publication rates, citation rates, number of grants applied for and renewed. There is a need for more research to understand the mechanisms that drive gender gaps in productivity.
Issue 2: Financial Compensation
The gap in financial compensation ranges from 68% to 99%, depending on rank and institution type. It is hard to compare the salaries of psychological scientists by gender. Why? Well, first, psychological scientists work within different settings, and the patterns vary by institutions. Salary reports do not always differentiate between research-intensive (RI) institutions and small liberal arts colleges. They also do not include data from 2-year colleges, non-traditional academic or industry settings. Second, the pay gap in psychology is minimized at the assistant professor level, but is more wide in senior faculty. Across all institutions, women make 94% of what men make at the associate-professor level and 91% at the full-professor level. An important note is the reversal across institution type: the gender pay gap is smaller at RI institutions compared to all institutions for assistant professors entering the academy, and wider for associate professors and even more wide for full professors. Data suggests that the pay gap at the professor level may reflect history (men have been full professors longer, so their salaries are higher), there may be other factors that are of influence. Therefore, it is important to track current cohorts until they become senior faculty members.
In addition to salary pay gaps, one study found that men in biomedical sciences receive more financial support outside of salaries compared to women. For example, they receive larger research start-up funds. It is not known to what extent these start-up gaps exist in psychological science and within its subdisciplines and this underscores the need for more research on this field.
So, why are there gender pay gaps? One possibility is that men are more research productive, and thus are given larger raises. However, one analysis showed that even women with productivity similar to that of men are paid less. This indicates that the pay gap cannot be fully explained by productivity differences. Another possibility is how perceived or actual gender norms can influence a women’s ability to negotiate successfully and persistently in the workplace and may contribute to the gender gap. For example, a meta-analysis showed that women are less likely to initiate negotiations compared to men. Another study found that men are 2 to 4 times more likely than women to initiate negotiations. Another study found that women may negotiate equally for increased salary, but that they have their requests honored less often. On the basis of role-congruity theory, Mazei et al.. (2015) found five moderators that can create a major challenge for women in the context of negotiation. For example, high role incongruity between qualities that have positive effects on outcomes (self-assertiveness) and female gender norms put women in a double-bind: being both assertive and accommodating in negotiations results in that women receive less.
In sum, gender gaps in salary level between women and men are apparent. This is especially observable at the associate- and full-professor ranks. Differences in productivity explains some part of this gender gap, as well as differences in negotiation outcomes. However, future research needs to examine whether other systemic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal factors may contribute to these gaps.
Issue 3: Service assignment and practices
An integral part of academic life is service to one’s department, university and broader scholarly community. This service is often required, but it is not well rewarded by tenure-and-promotion systems. Research has shown that there are gender gaps in service. For example, women report feeling more overburdened by service and doing more relation service (mentoring) than task-oriented service (committee work) than men. There are mixed results with regard to gender differences in service. Therefore, some evidence suggests that there are gender differences in service, but there is enough null evidence to suggest that the differences may be inconsistent or variable across institutions, that they may be modest in effect size, and that they may hinge on the type of service being assessed and how it is measured.
What can be concluded?
There are some positive gender differences for women. For example, women are attracted to psychology in record numbers as trainees and earn more doctoral degrees than men. Furthermore, women who choose to enter the academy as assistant professors are as likely as men or even more likely as men to be hired and are as likely as men to obtain tenure. These are significant achievements for women in psychological science and this signals a positive change, especially for early-career scientists. However, at the same time, there are notable gender gaps and these need further research. Women are still underrepresented in more senior ranks and are less likely to receive distinguished scientist awards and salaries compared to men. They are also less likely to submit, renew, and hold grants, to publish and to be cited, and are less likely to achieve eminence.
Issue 4: Lifestyle roles and work-family conflict
Systemic factors
According to social-role theory, gender segregation into different roles and occupations lead to cultural stereotypes than men are assertive breadwinners who focus on self-achievement, and that women are nurturant caregivers who focus on communal goals. These stereotypes contribute to societal systems in which women are expected to be the primary caregiver in heterosexual families. For example, American mothers spend 75% more hours per week on childcare than fathers. This systemic pressure for women to be a caregiver may also contribute to women’s lower publishing rates and research eminence, and also to higher rates of service. In elaboration, this pressure can lead to women opting out of tenure-track positions. Among graduate students, preferences to enter the tenure track are dampened by the lack of visible women mentors who have children. These structural factors can contribute to women in psychology being more reluctant to disclose information regarding parenting or pregnancy status or more hesitant to discuss family plans with advisors. Even when women’s careers are established, other systemic issues can lead to work-family challenges. For example, scheduling of courses and meetings outside normal childcare hours (early evenings) may create conflicts. Also, academia involves commitments which extend beyond the time when children are in school or when child care is available, such as traveling to and attending conferences. Therefore, women can opt out of these commitments because of childcare demands. Then they may lose opportunities for collaboration and visibility, which may negatively impact their career eminence. Time spent on childcare may also detract from time spent on research. Female assistant professors of psychology who have children publish less than those without children. One way to overcome this would be having access to parental leave. However, not all faculties have access to these policies, and such policies are often not extended to graduate students and postdocs. Women on U.S. federally funded training are even ineligible for state disability benefits that cover parental leave. Another point is the fertility window for women. This remains a biologically determined barrier to career success for most women, and this does not exist for men. For example, women’s fertility declines around the age of 32. The median age for women completing a doctorate in psychology in the United States is 31.1 years. Therefore, women who wish to have children find that childbearing and rearing can have an effect on productivity and can compromise tenure prospects. Delaying childbearing can increase the risk of fertility challenges and complications, which carry substantial costs to finances, physical health, and mental health. There have been no successful ways to solve the coincidence of the peak-fertility window with the years in which women’s investment in their career is most likely to pay off. This problem does not exist for men in a direct manner.
Interpersonal factors
Across academia, married women are less likely than married men to enter a tenure-track job. Married women with young children are also less likely than men with young children to obtain a tenure-track job within 6 years after receiving a PhD. Unmarried women are 9 to 16% more likely to get a tenure-track job than unmarried men in comparisons across STEM fields, the humanities, and social sciences. Thus, it seems that marrying and having children affect women more than men.
In sum, both systemic and interpersonal factors connected to social role expectations for women compared to men may directly affect gender differences in productivity and other indicators of career success. These gender-roles exist at a societal level and thus are not unique to psychological scientists.
Issue 5: Gender biases
Gender bias is defined as differential attitudes toward, and stereotypes about, a group of individuals that are based solely on their membership in that group. Cultural stereotypes about women and work have changed, but they still exist. These gender stereotypes prescribe women as being better caregivers which require communal qualities (warmth, patience) whereas men are better suited to high-status roles (professors, CEO) which require agentic traits (dominance, ambition). Even positive stereotypes for women (helpful, warm) are associated with lower status, supportive roles in the workplace and are perceived to be at odds with more agentic qualities.
When we look at gender stereotypes of scientists, there are four consistent findings. First, there is a traditional stereotype which associates science with men more than with women. Second, this stereotype has decreased over time, but is still present. Third, this decrease is likely driven by increased exposure to women scientists, especially when this exposure is made salient. Fourth, the decrease can be largely attributed to changes in women’s stereotypes of their own gender, which were historically as strong as men’s stereotypes about women.
A third type of stereotype is the tendency to associate men more than women with brilliance. This stereotype emerges among girls and boys as young as 6 years old who are equivalent in academic metrics such as classroom grades. This may in turn affect girls’ and women’s interest in careers or roles that require brilliance.
These stereotypes in which women are seen as more communal (warm and caregiving) and men as more agentic (ambitious and brilliant) may lead to perceivers having more doubts about women’s ability to excel in academia. Women and men are significantly more likely to hold doubts about women candidates when writing letters of recommendation for assistant-professor positions.
With regard to services, women report greater negative consequences of engaging in service in terms of time that they invest in it. The association between service and career outcomes is also stronger for men than for women: men are evaluated positively for engaging in service in business contexts, while women are evaluated negatively for withholding service. Also, the association between citizenship behavior and promotion is stronger in men than in women, at least in the world of business.
Issue 6: Holding positions of power
In some domains there are no gender differences in leadership positions. In other domains, there are gender imbalances. For example, 42% of associate editors for the same APA and APS journals are women. In 2013, only 40$ of psychology department chairs were women, and one in three APA fellows were women.
Research on influence suggests two pathways to gain status: dominance and prestige. This means that, traditionally, people expect and want leaders that are dominant. This can lead to interpersonal and intrapersonal challenges for women who want to be leaders. The leadership-as-dominance model is thus better suited for men than for women. Women can be reluctant to express dominance. They speak less frequently and less loudly and are less likely to interrupt others and to display anger. As an example, men are 1.8 times more likely to ask questions at a biology conference across both older and younger attendees. But, why are women more reluctant to express dominance? Well, one reason might be the risk of backlash when they do so. For example, when women behave dominantly, they are less liked than men, but only when they engage in overt dominance (arguing, making demands). Thus, if leadership positions require dominance, then women may be perceived as less suitable for such positions.
With regard to prestige, leaders are often equally or more attractive if they achieve the position through respect and admiration from others or for their skills or knowledge. The difference between dominant and prestigious leaders is that dominant leaders force their views on others, whereas prestigious leaders inspire others to follow them. Therefore, in scientific fields, prestige may be more important than dominance. However, even the leadership-as-prestige model favors those who are seen as brilliant and productive, and women lag behind men in terms of productivity.
Issue 7: Intersectionality
Intersectionality is defined as how a person’s various identities can combine to have additive and often multiplicative influences. For example, gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, religion, and so forth.
There is an underrepresentation of BIPIC (Black, indigenous, or people of color) in academia. This can lead to that many of these women face barriers to enter psychological science. For example, to get into graduate school, a student needs research opportunities which are facilitated through formal and informal contact with faculty. Research has shown that women and BIPOC individuals are less likely to get a response to e-mail requests to future meetings with professors, relative to White men. For women, White women are twice as likely to get a response as a Black women. Even when BIPOC women do enter psychology, they still may face barriers to success. For example, BIPOC scholars are systematically underrepresented as writers and editors in psychology, even on topics related to race.
BIPOC individuals spend more time on navigating social interactions because of their dual identities. For example, Black women in business settings have to learn how to deal with tokenism and stereotypes such as being perceived as caregiving ‘mommies’ or as an angry Black women.
Research on faculty members across the sciences shows that women and BIPOC academics are more likely to report feeling socially isolated.
With regards to LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, agender, asexual), it has been shown that these individuals report low institutional support and perceived discouragement from expressing their identity.
Issue 8: Harassment and incivility
Sexual harassment occurs in academia for both trainees and professionals. More than half of women undergraduate students across fields report being sexually harassed, for example receiving inappropriate comments about body, behavior, or appearance, as well as sexual insulting and offensive comments and jokes or stories. Many student victims do not report misconduct, because they think it will not be taken seriously. Studies suggest that sexual harassment is a function of dominance or power. Those who associate sexuality with power may be primed by power to experience sexual urges. This means that as long as power-based stereotypes about men and women persist, sexual harassment is likely to continue to be an issue in the workplace, especially for women.
Issue 9: Agency, self-esteem, and self-promotion
There are also interpersonal factors such as values and preferences that can influence one’s career. For example agency, self-esteem and self-promotion.
Academia generally rewards agency, self-esteem and self-promotion, and studies suggest that women who are sensitive to gender-based rejection cues may be more likely than men to avoid engaging in professional activities. Future research needs to study whether these gender differences in agency, self-esteem and self-promotion contribute to the gender differences in publications, self-citations or eminence.
In sum, internalized intrapersonal processes and stereotypes may inform women’s self-views which in turn may shape the different ways in which women and men structure their careers. For example, women hold greater communal values and this may direct them toward service, teaching, and mentoring roles that are aligned with helping others. Furthermore, women hold lower self-perceptions of agency, assertiveness, and competition relative tom men. This may lead to reduced willingness to submit to top journals, apply for grants, self-cite, self-nominate for awards, ask for promotion and ask for more resources.
Issue 10: A lack of belonging
A lack of belonging is another intrapersonal factor that may shape women’s choices to enter psychological science, their retention, and their opportunities to advance. Women in academia are more likely than men to report a lack of belonging in their organization. This may reuce their involvement in their field. There are three main factors that may influence women’s sense of belonging: the value of stereotypically feminine versus masculine traits in academia; mismatched beliefs about effort and fit and; the lower visibility of women relative to men in academia.
Raising awareness and developing empirical foundations for further action
A first way to go is to document the phenomenon and raise awareness of any disparities that are found. There is more research needed to understand which of the systemic, interpersonal and intrapersonal mechanisms contribute to pay and productivity differences.
Reducing gender gaps in career advancement, eminence, and power
An important first step is to continue to maintain progress in the gender gap observed in new hires and promotions to senior faculty ranks. There have been interventions tested, for example redesigning institutional or committee procedures. Including women on committees that select colloquium speakers may also improve gender equity in committee decisions. The authors suggest that committees appoint an equity advocate on the committee and that they document the effect this has on selection processes over time.
Tackling financial disparities
The authors recommend to make compensation information more widely available. Furthermore, they recommend that women develop effective negotiation skills and become aware of the mechanisms for receiving outside offers. A third recommendation is to encourage more formal ways to bring attention to and enact change in gender pay within institutions in which they exist.
Addressing work-family conflict
Universities could undertake actions to redress issues related to caring responsibilities. For example, they could offer funds to enable parents to travel to conferences and they could mandate that departments operate core business during family-friendly hours. Universities could also provide more support for partner hires, and hiring packages for parents could include guaranteed placement in high-quality childcare facilities. Furthermore, parental leave policies should be made available to students and postdoctoral trainees. Universities should also adopt paid family leave and institute and incentivize partner leave. Furthermore, universities could decide to pay for egg freezing to allow greater flexibility and autonomy in the timing of childbearing.
Equalizing service across women and men
To foster equity in service one could implement a rotation for service among faculty members, formalize a pool of eligible individuals when assigning service roles, implement consequences for failure to follow up on service assignments, and formalize service roles as part of the salary-raise-and-promotion-process.
Confronting potential gender biases
A general strategy to break down gender biases is to provide: a) workshops to increase understanding of bias; b) programs that teach strategies to confront and reduce the influence of biases on decision making, and; c) experiential learning opportunities to lessen sexist attitudes.
Enabling underrepresented women to advance forward
One opportunity to increase opportunities for women and especially for those with intersectional identities is based on men and women who are already ‘on the inside’. This means that when one is going to be dining with colleagues, one might invite an underrepresented colleague and ask her to invite another. Thus, by using a ‘plus one’ strategy, this can help to lift up women. Another strategy is to promote programs that mentor and encourage underrepresented voices in psychological science to speak in a public sphere.
Strengthening mentorship, career advancement, and experience of belonging for women
Getting mentorship by senior scholars is important for advancement in scientific career. The author suggest that departments formalize and document expectations for mentorship for all faculty from and for both women and men. There is more research needed to study where gender gaps may exist and how to enhance women’s sense of belonging in psychological science.
Addressing harassment
The 2018 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine suggested the following steps for reducing harassment:
- Create a diverse, inclusive, and respectful environment;
- Diffuse the power structure and reduce isolation;
- Develop supportive structures and systems for those who experience sexual harassment;
- Improve transparency and accountability;
- Ensure there is diverse, effective, and accountable leadership that is unambiguous about its commitment to reduce and eliminate harassment and;
- Develop and use effective sexual harassment training.
