WOMEN AND PUBLISHING IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

From a Google Scholar search of the period 2007–2023, we found 26 articles that discuss the gender balance in publications.Footnote ² Many of these published articles used submission as the point of departure for their examination of publishing patterns. The consensus that emerges is that women submit to journals, especially highly ranked journals, in lower numbers compared to their men counterparts (Breuning and Sanders Reference Breuning and Sanders2007; Teele and Thelen Reference Teele and Thelen2017; Young Reference Young1995). Of the 17 articles in our sample that considered submissions, all identified a gender gap in submissions. However, the scale of the gap varied considerably, from articles (authored or coauthored) by women in International Organization as low as 22% (Breuning and Sanders Reference Breuning and Sanders2007) to journals such as South European Politics and Society that reported that women authors account for 38% of submissions (Verney and Bosco Reference Verney and Bosco2022).

Although submissions are the first step in the publishing process, acceptance rates are critical to understanding the final production of knowledge for the discipline. In the systematic review, 23 of the 26 articles addressed a gender gap in acceptances with articles by men, in all forms, as more prominent (see, e.g., Nedal and Nexon Reference Nedal and Nexon2018). However, there is some nuance to this finding. Recent research—although continuing to report an overall gender gap that favors male authors in accepted articles—provides mixed findings regarding acceptance rates for men and women (Martinsen, Goetz, and Müller Reference Martinsen, Goetz and Müller2022). For example, Teele and Thelen (Reference Teele and Thelen2017) reported that female authors face higher rejection rates. In their study of World Politics, Tudor and Yashar (Reference Tudor and Yashar2018, 870) pointed out that solo-author women and men had equal chances of being accepted (see also Stockemer et al. Reference Stockemer, Reidy, Teodoro and Gerba2022). In contrast, Stockemer, Blair, and Rashkova (Reference Stockemer, Blair and Rashkova2020, 404) presented data on the acceptance rate of articles in European Political Science and demonstrated that acceptance rates for women are notably higher: male and female authors had acceptance rates of 45% and 60%, respectively. Furthermore, male-authored, coauthored, or male-led papers had double the rejection rate that female-led papers had (Stockemer, Blair, and Rashkova Reference Stockemer, Blair and Rashkova2020, 404–5). The literature also has advanced arguments about why acceptance rates for women could be higher: women are less confident about their work and want to perfect it to a higher standard than men (König and Ropers Reference König and Ropers2018, 851) and women are more concerned about rejection than men (Stockemer, Blair, and Rashkova Reference Stockemer, Blair and Rashkova2020).

Even when the acceptance rates of women are higher, the literature presents a clear picture: men publish more than women (table 1). Yet, most of these studies do not consider the presence of women in the discipline. We believe that presence is an essential mediating variable in any discussion of productivity and output. A small number of articles have used the overall gender balance in the profession to contextualize their analysis. These studies provide mixed results. Cellini (Reference Cellini2022) pointed out that in the Italian case, although the percentage of women at all levels of the profession had increased in the past decade, they still publish at a rate lower than the percentage of their representation in the discipline (see also Maliniak, Powers, and Walter Reference Maliniak, Powers and Walter2013). Conversely, Evans and Bucy (Reference Evans and Bucy2020) suggested that the gender gap has been eliminated in their work on Political Communication and Press Politics, which compares publication presence to the gender breakdown of membership in major associations (i.e., International Communication Association and American Political Science Association). More nuanced, Teele and Thelen (Reference Teele and Thelen2017, 437) in their comparative study found that only four journals have a gender publication balance that aligns with the presence of women in the discipline. Importantly, they also showed that where gender imbalances exist, they permeate all levels of the discipline. Specifically, at the professor level, they showed that “although about 23% of full professors are women, only 11% of the full professors who write for these top journals are women, meaning that there is a gender gap of 12 points at the full professor level.”Footnote ³

Table 1 Summary of Literature Search

Source: Authors’ literature search. Total N=26.

Our research builds on the few studies that consider women’s presence in the discipline to be an important mediating variable. Indeed, we deem it crucial to consider women’s presence in the discipline. The following example illustrates this point. We considered that there is no gender gap in publications at the individual level if there are 35% women in the discipline and an average of 35% of published authors are women. In this scenario, the average individual man would publish exactly the same number of articles as the average individual woman. We used IPSR as a case study to investigate whether a gender imbalance still exists in journal publishing when we systematically compared the presence of men and women in the discipline.

INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW

IPSR is a generalist political science journal and an association journal with a wide reach in terms of both its distribution and the profile of its submitting authors. IPSR is ranked Q1–Q2 of all political science journals and it is listed in both the Social Science Citation Index and Scopus. Thus, it is what might be considered a “respectable” journal, which creates an important demand factor among political science departments that encourage their colleagues to submit their work to “good” outlets. The journal receives from 250 to 300 submissions annually, it publishes five issues per year, and its acceptance rate oscillates slightly more than 20%. In 2020, IPSR received submissions from authors in 64 countries and it accepted manuscripts from authors in 23 countries. We acknowledge that authors are located predominantly in the Global North; however, IPSR is one of only a few political science journals with modest representation of authors from the developing world—and this pattern has been evident for some time (Lima, Morschbacher, and Peres Reference Lima, Morschbacher and Peres2018).

IPSR also is pluralist in its vision and practice: it accepts manuscripts from all areas of the discipline and it encourages methodological diversity. Importantly, IPSR has a long history of publishing high-quality research on gender and politics, the subdisciplinary area with the highest concentration of female scholars. Moreover, although quantitative research methods have become the most common research approach in articles published in IPSR, qualitative research techniques feature in more than 30% of those published (Lima, Morschbacher, and Peres Reference Lima, Morschbacher and Peres2018). It is this track record of IPSR that situates it as an important test case to study patterns of publishing in political science. The journal is genuinely representative of the discipline.Footnote ⁴ The pluralism of IPSR means that it provides a good overall reflection of the discipline. However, in terms of comparability, it may not fully reflect the author profile found in other journals whose authorship may be more US-based and have less thematic and methodological diversity. Our study used articles submitted to IPSR from 2019 to 2020. The journal received 518 submissions from 884 authors during this period (Stockemer et al. Reference Stockemer, Reidy, Teodoro and Gerba2022). The dataset included information on career stage, authorship type, and gender. Gender has been self-reported by submitting authors since 2018 at IPSR. Aligned with public commentary and academic research (Stockemer and Reidy Reference Stockemer and Reidy2024), our data also attest to a decline in the overall percentage of female submitting authors in 2020. Therefore, we suggest that the inclusion of 2020 data in the study makes this a strong test of gendered patterns in publication.

FINDINGS

Of the 518 papers received, 69% of submissions were from male authors and 31% were from female authors. Reviewing the wider balance of men and women in the departments of submitting authors, we found that the percentage of male faculty members within the dataset of departments was 62% and the percentage of female faculty members was 38% (table 2).Footnote ⁵ Because our submitting authors came from a diverse worldwide range of departments and research institutes, we argue that the departments of authors submitting to IPSR likely provided a robust representation of the gender breakdown in the international pool of political scientists.

Table 2 Total Breakdown of Male versus Female Faculty and Graduate Students from Submitting Authors’ Department or Faculty (as of April 2022)

For comparison, the final line in table 2 presents the overall gender balance in the profession worldwide as reported in the 2022 International Political Science Association (IPSA) gender-monitoring report (Korkut and Saint-Laurent Reference Korkut and St-Laurent2023). Because IPSA is the association that owns IPSR, we considered it a relevant benchmark for the profession in this context. In terms of the overall balance of women in the profession, the percentages broadly matched the data from the departments in this study—that is, 36%—whereas the percentage of women authors submitting to IPSR is only slightly higher at 40%.

To contextualize table 2, we categorized the submissions by professional rank (figure 1). As expected, this highlighted a stark gender imbalance favoring men for full professors. However, in the ranks in which women academics are more strongly represented in the discipline (e.g., associate professor and assistant professor), the gender gap in submissions to IPSR was smaller. In more detail, for associate professors—the most productive rank for publishing—the gender ratio was the smallest. It was again somewhat higher for assistant professors and postdoctoral scholars. The finding that the associate and full professor ranks comprise the majority of submissions is somewhat in contrast to previous US work, which noted that tenure-track (usually assistant) professors are more likely to publish articles than their more senior peers, who have a greater proclivity to publish books (Djupe, Smith, and Sokhey Reference Djupe, Smith and Sokhey2022, 38–40).

Figure 1 Submissions by Gender and Professional Rank

Note: Each professional category is set at 100%. The overall professional breakdown is professor (25%); associate professor (32%); assistant professor (26%); and postdoctoral scholar, visiting researcher, and part-time lecturer (16%).

Regarding authorship type, figure 2 shows the gender breakdown of single- and multi-authored work. Of the manuscripts submitted to IPSR, 22% were single-authored by men and 8% were single-authored by women. Of the remaining 70%, the breakdown was 47% men and 23% women. This translates broadly to a 2:1 ratio, which aligns with the overall representation of men and women in the profession.

Figure 2 Authorship Type by Gender (%)

Note: Each authorship category is set at 100%.

The acceptance rate for IPSR from 2019 to 2020 was 26%Footnote ⁶: 21% for male authors and 35% for female authors. Table 3 highlights that the percentage of female faculty from submitting authors’ departments in the dataset was 30%; table 4 shows that the total percentage of accepted articles for female faculty was 40%. These percentages also imply that there is no gender gap. Indeed, they suggest that women are performing marginally ahead of their percentage representation in the discipline. When we expand the analysis to include graduate students, the positive performance of female scholars is amplified further. Of the graduate students in our data, 37% were female and their acceptance rate was 64%. However, the overall numbers are low for graduate students, which implies that we must interpret this result as a good indication rather than a definitive finding. The number of graduate students publishing in top-ranked journals usually is modest; however, including this level is important because it is reasonable to assume that graduate students who publish are likely to become the next generation of faculty members.

Table 3 Total Male and Female Author Submissions

Table 4 Total of Accepted versus Rejected Submissions of Male and Female Authors

Further evidence of the disappearing gender gap in political science publishing emerges when we examine the total proportion of published papers from the IPSR sample (derived from tables 2 and 3): 57% of accepted papers were submitted by male authors and 43% by female authors. This challenges the conventional wisdom that there is a persistent and notable gender imbalance in publishing. Furthermore, the data highlight that, in fact, male authors underperform relative to their personnel ratio in political science departments, which is 62% (see table 2), or 60% including graduate students. Female authors overperform, with female faculty in the discipline at 38%, or 40% including graduate students, whereas their share of total accepted papers was 43%. Overall, our data show that publication and gender ratios within the discipline are much closer than in previous decades and can be attributed to a proportional and reasonable variance. The data show only a slight under- and over-performance of male and female authors, respectively, which demonstrates that female authors are not underrepresented in publication relative to their male counterparts.

In summary, we find that there is only a slight submissions gap in political science—69% male to 31% female (see table 3)—whereas presence in the field is 60% to 40% for males and females, respectively. Yet, this minor submissions gap disappears at the acceptance stage. These percentages also illustrate that male authors are not, as Saraceno (Reference Saraceno2020, 59) stated, “overpublished” relative to their share of submitted manuscripts. That is, whereas male authors submit marginally more manuscripts than female authors (Closa et al. Reference Closa, Moury, Novakova, Qvortrup and Ribeiro2020, 428), they are published in proportion to their presence in the field.