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24 października 2023

“Gender inequalities in scientific careers: summary of the project”
Karolina Goraus-Tańska, Jacek Lewkowicz, Krzysztof Szczygielski

Women continue to be underrepresented in science, especially at the top level. There is also some evidence on gender differences in scientific productivity over the life cycle, but the empirical evidence is scarce, partially due to data limitations. With our project we aimed to address this issue, and conduct analysis of gender inequalities in science for the case of Poland, using a newly created database.

Our project is supported by grant from University of Warsaw Programme “Excellence Initiative – Research University”, Action I.3.9 “Human mobility and inequalities as seen through digital datasources”, and one of its aims was to create and utilize a unique digital data source on scientists’ career milestones (e.g., obtaining subsequent academic titles) and their publication records. The process of creating the main database consisted of (i) accessing and cleaning the information from Polish Scientific Bibliography database, where Polish scientists report their scientific publications, (ii) assigning the gender variable to the database on publications, on the basis of the first name of the author, (iii) adding variables that assign points to the articles based on journals quality, using both local and international rankings, (iv) collecting data on the authors career, namely the year of PhD defense/habilitation/professorship, scientific discipline, place of employment etc. using database from the Integrated Network of Information on Science and Higher Education that supports scientific policy in Poland. Controlling for academic field, universities’ quality, and year of PhD defense, we first analyze gender gaps in timespan between obtaining subsequent academic titles. Adding to this picture information on publications, we also analyze whether total amount and quality of publications (as assessed using the rankings of journals) obtained before reaching a subsequent academic title is different for women and men. Our results suggest that it takes longer for women to make habilitation (especially in the past), but not the professorship, which may signal the effect of parenthood, that is well established in the literature. We do not find the evidence for differences in scientific output obtained by women and men to reach habilitation. Overall, women are majority among PhDs, but it is the opposite for PhDs with habilitation, and for professors.

blog-gender.pngApart from creating a special database, our project created another value added: the project team became part of an important national and international discussion around the gender inequality in science. In June 2023, an event devoted solely to the topic of gender inequality in academia was organized in Warsaw by the Forum for Research on Gender Economics (FROGEE), FREE Network. Organizing institutions included Polish think-tank Centre for Economic Analysis (CenEA), Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), and Stockholm School of Economics. This two-day event titled “The playing field in academia: why are women still underrepresented” consisted of Seminar workshop in Hotel Warszawa, and of conference day in the Royal Castle. The Seminar workshop was a forum for a detailed discussion around just six papers, including ours. The event gathered on-site an important audience of scientists, public officers, and civil workers involved in the topics of gender inequalities, and was also streamed on-line allowing for broad international participation. As one of our project aims is to bring attention to the topic of gender gaps among academics, we would like to share here some materials, as well as our insights from the event.

During the first seminar session, two papers were presented along ours. Alessandra Casarico discussed the article co-authored with Audinga Baltrunaite and Lucia Rizzica “Women in economics: the role of gendered references at the entry in the profession”. The authors utilize a novel dataset, created with the usage of NLP techniques, that includes various information on the recommendation letters received by ten cohorts of academic job applicants in the field of Economics applying to two top institutions in Italy. Controlling for detailed information from applicants CVs, the authors find that male and female candidates receive letters that significantly differ in their style and content, which subsequently affects their placement. Next, Iga Magda provided presentation on “The gender pay gap at the early stage of an academic career” (co-authored with Jacek Bielinski, Marzena Feldy and Anna Knapinska). The authors used detailed social insurance data gathered in the Polish Graduate Tracking System ELA for cohorts graduating between 2014 and 2018, along with information on their scientific productivity (grants, publications) and other data on their employment in academic sector (e.g. feminization of fields of study). The authors’ results point towards relatively small gender pay gap in the academic sector at the early stage of academic careers. In the second session, Anne Sophie Lassen presented “The Lost Ester Boserups: The Impact of Parenthood on Academic Careers” (with Ria Ivandic). The authors use a forty years panel of Danish administrative data combined with information on publications from Scopus database, to study the impact of children on pursuing successful academic career. The authors find that having children reduces women’s chances of staying in academia, and, conditional that they do, also reduces likelihood of getting tenure three years following parenthood, while gender gap in publications is insignificant. Then Alessandra Casarico presented her other work on the issue of gender inequalities in academia – the article “Research Similarity and Women in Academia” (with Piera Bello and Debora Nozza). The study covers the extent to which research similarity between senior and junior researchers influences hiring and promotion in academia, with a particular focus on gender differences. The authors use a very novel dataset with the calls for assistant prof. positions in economics in Italy. The data includes information on candidates, members of the hiring committees, who are also members of depts. that launched the respective calls, in the period 2013-2021. Importantly, the authors propose a measure of research similarity between each candidate and member of the committee (text cosine similarity between abstract of research papers; mean and max similarity). The output of this quantitative exercise suggests that research similarity, approximated this way, influences positively the probability of winning the procedure for tenured track assistant prof. It seems that men are more likely to be strongly similar to one of the members of the committee and gender difference disappears if we focus just on the female members of the committee. Even if the role of similarity does not vary by gender, some small differences do exist across macro-fields. Finally, Diana Terrazas-Santamaria presented work “Gender differences in collaboration patterns among Mexican researchers” (with Aurora Ramirez-Alvarez and Daniela Aguirre-Guerrero). Mexico often emerges as an unequal country, including the academia in terms of women’s presence and seniority. The article is based on the National System of Researchers (SNI) data (2021 registry on Economics, Engineering and Health Sciences; metadata on researchers’ publications and citations). One of the key findings of this study is that female researchers have a smaller number of citations than their male counterparts, mainly because female ones have relatively fewer publications and a shorter career. In addition, the results imply that female researchers have a higher return in number of citations per publication and year of career, as compared to men.

The second day of the event, organized in the Royal Castle in Warsaw, started with the welcome speech by CenEA president Michał Myck. Plenary lectures were provided by Carlo Schwarz from Bocconi University (“Gender Gaps in Academia: Global Evidence over the 20th Century”) and Sarah Smith from University of Bristol (“Promoting diversity: Gender equality initiatives in economics”). Monika Oczkowska from CenEA discussed the evidence on gender gaps in academia in Central and Eastern Europe. Finally there were three very interesting panel discussions: 1. “Making the field level: lessons learnt” that started with the presentation of the movie “Sidelined in Science” by the Swedish House of Finance, 2. “Career’s early stage: ensuring a fair start”, and 3. “Ensuring equality and fairness in research funding”. University of Warsaw was represented in those panels by two prominent professors – Anna Matysiak and Joanna Tyrowicz. We strongly encourage you to listen to all those interesting presentations and discussions yourself – the whole day was recorded and is available on youtube, see here. You may also read the policy brief of the event here.

29 czerwca 2022 r.

EOS-logo.pngWizyta studyjna w School of Business University of South-Eastern Norway
 – podsumowanie projektu

 

 

Badaczki Wydziału Nauk Ekonomicznych Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego: prof. dr hab. Zofia Barbara Liberdy oraz dr Karolina Goraus-Tańska z Katedry Innowacji i Rozwoju WNE UW, a także mgr Katarzyna Sałach, doktorantka Wydziału, w ramach otrzymanego dofinansowania, zrealizowały wizytę studyjną w School of Business University of South-Eastern Norway.

katedra-rozwoju-aktualnosc-1.jpgOtrzymane wsparcie realizowane było z PROGRAMU EDUKACJA, Profesjonalny Rozwój Kadry – Wizyty Studyjne pt. „Efekty redystrybucyjne systemów fiskalnych w Polsce i Norwegii”. Projekt korzystał z dofinansowania o wartości 8 525 EUR otrzymanego od Islandii, Liechtensteinu i Norwegii w ramach Funduszy EOG i obejmował wizytę studyjną na University of South-Eastern Norway (USN), School of Business. Badaczem reprezentującym uczelnię przyjmującą w projekcie jest profesor Jon Reiersen.

Celem projektu była wymiana i poszerzenie wiedzy kadry akademickiej na temat metod i narzędzi umożliwiających analizę efektów redystrybucyjnych systemów fiskalnych, oraz ich efektywności w ograniczaniu nierówności i ubóstwa w Polsce i Norwegii.  Nasi badacze, w trakcie wizyty studyjnej, prezentowali swoje badania podczas zorganizowanych wspólnie warsztatów poświęconych analizom efektów redystrybucyjnych polityk fiskalnych, jak również uczestniczyli jako słuchacze i współprowadzący w wykładach, poprowadzili seminarium lunchowe oraz wzięli udział w różnych dyskusjach zespołowych dotyczących badań, dydaktyki i planów na dalszą współpracę. Wizyta odbywała się w dniach 04-08.04.2022.

Szczegółowy plan wizyty studyjnej był następujący: 

  • w poniedziałek, 04.04.2022, badaczki WNE uczestniczyły w spotkaniu z doradcą USN Line Whittall dotyczącym historii i funkcjonowania USN jako całości, oraz roli USN School of Business. Odbyło się również zwiedzanie kampusu i wspólny lunch. Kolejno badacze współprowadzili wykład z profesorem Jonem Reiersenem. Wieczorem cały zespół projektu spędził wspólnie czas na zwiedzaniu Åsgårdstrand, odbywając spacer śladami Edwarda Muncha.
  • we wtorek, 05.04.2022, miały miejsce warsztaty „Workshop: Inequality, redistribution, and social spending – Poland and Norway” na które zaproszeni zostali badacze i studenci USN. Przedstawione zostały następujące prezentacje: (i) Karolina Goraus-Tańska i Jon Reiersen: Information about the EEA Grant system - possibilities for future cooperation, (ii) Karolina Goraus-Tańska i Katarzyna Sałach: The fiscal system in Poland and its redistributive effects, (iii) Barbara Liberda: Intergenerational solidarity - generational accounts, (iv) Jon Reiersen: Perceptions of inequality and preferences for redistribution. Wieczorem zespół projektowy wybrał się wspólnie na obiad do restauracji.
  • w środę, 06.04.2022, miały miejsce dyskusje zespołowe, w szczególności dotyczące przedstawionych tego dnia prezentacji: (i) Danuta Tomczak: Institutional conditions for social equality in Poland and Norway, (ii) Jon Reiersen: The Trust-Equality Multiplier: The political economy of redistribution in Norway, (iii) Karolina Goraus-Tanska and Katarzyna Sałach: More on the fiscal system in Poland and its redistributive effects. Badaczki WNE poprowadziły również seminarium lunchowe przedstawiając swoje refleksje dotyczące wojny w Ukrainie i sytuacji w Polsce w 2022 roku. 
  • w czwartek, 07.04.2022, zespół poświęcał czas na pracę zespołową, oraz miał przyjemność wysłuchać prezentacji profesora Halvora Mehluma „Mineral rents and social policy in Norway” na Uniwersytecie w Oslo. Wieczorem zespół wspólnie wybrał się do Muzeum Muncha w Oslo.
  • w piątek, 08.04.2022, ostatniego dnia wizyty studyjnej, zespół dyskutował nad kolejnymi zagadnieniami badawczymi (prezentował Jon Reiersen: Social trust and the COVID-19 pandemic). Poruszał również tematy dotyczące bieżących wyzwań w Polsce i Norwegii związanych z pandemią COVID-19 (Discussion: Comparative perspectives on the COVID-19 crisis: Poland and Norway). Następnie odbył się lunch z Camillą Nereid (Head of department) i Siri Bjørnstad (Senior advisor international relations). Po lunchu miała miejsce dyskusja z Siri Bjørnstad dotycząca współpracy USN z partnerami międzynarodowymi, a resztę dnia zespół poświęcił na dyskusję nad planami dalszej współpracy.

Więcej informacji o konkursie znajduje się na stronie www.frse.org.pl/finansowanie-projektow/wizyty-studyjne-dla-kadry

Klauzula informacyjna: wyłączną odpowiedzialność za treść publikacji ponosi UW WNE. ( z umowy str. 15, pkt XXV.3)