Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology  Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Sex Differences in Citations among South African Invasion Ecologists, Heidi E Prozesky Lecturer, Stellenbosch University Paper presented at: Conference on the Politics of Knowing: Research, Institutions and Gender Prague, Czech Republic, November 2008

Introduction One cannot address the issue of women’s participation in science without taking into account gender variations in research performance Number of papers (output volume or “quantity”) Number of citations (impact, recognition, or “quality”) The “quality” criterion as a gender issue in science Research objective: Analysing sex differences in citations to South African authored scientific journal contributions published within the field of invasion ecology

Literature review There are very few citation differences between men and women Differences are largely a function of aggregate differences between men and women in terms of publication rate (and/or other variables) “If females publish at parity with males and maintained their level of citation per paper, they would have significantly more citations than males” (Long 1992) Two studies report women outperforming men in terms of citations But: there is an effect of gender on the likelihood of being highly cited

Shortcomings to be addressed Gender representation among the most-cited, in proportion to gender representation in field Classification of papers by the sex composition of author sets The field of invasion ecology is characterized by a high level of multiple authorship, which problematise the notion of “women’s” and “men’s” articles Taking into account (particularly first) author position

Methodology Invasion ecology as one of the few niche areas of demonstrated excellence in SA (highly competitive, “hot” field) Data collection 359 articles selected from SA Knowledgebase 830 SA authorships with known gender Citations as an indicator of quality? “no universal consensus that they would truly represent scientific quality has materialized as yet” (Sonnert 1995) Pragmatic approach: If research managers define citations as real, they are real in their consequences (Thomas theorem)

Results (1a): Gender composition of author sets (unit of analysis: articles) To be expected, on the basis of women’s under-representation in the field in general

Results (1b): Gender composition of author sets and citations Articles written predominantly/only by women are more higly represented among those attracting a relatively low no. of c.p.a. 10 most highly cited articles (<11 c.p.a.): all co-authored 4 by men only None by women only

Results (2): The relationship between gender, author position, and citation frequency (unit of analysis: authorships)

Results (2): The relationship between gender, author position, and citation frequency (cont.) Women are slightly more likely than men to be 1st authors Women as first authors attract substantially less citations (1.1 c.p.a.) than men (1.8 c.p.a) in the same author position None of the 1st authors of the 10 most-highly cited articles are women Women are proportionately more likely to be 1st authors of articles that have as yet attracted no citations

Interpretation and conclusions In a highly competitive and prestigious field, women’s output (although small in terms of quantity) is not marginal, but is cited by others The inclusion of women in an author set tends to have a negative, rather than a positive effect on the impact an article has on the field Possible reasons? – for discussion Women are definitely not relegated to the back of the author list, but do attract less citations as 1 st authors than men do A case of ‘token’ first authorship on papers judged to be routine?

Acknowledgements Center for Research on Science and Technology (CREST) at the US, for the use of SA Knowledgebase data DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Invasion Biology (CIB) Assistance in data collection Funding for research assistance Research assistants Charlize Mouton Marion van Dorssen Christopher Mechnig