Data-driven study finds gender inequality in academic publishing

Editors of academic journals hold an influential position in their field. They have decision-making power over which authors and papers get published, set journal policy, and help shape the trajectory of their discipline. It is also a role in which women are frequently underrepresented.

Assistant professor of accounting Sebastian Tideman-Frappart and several colleagues set out to fill a knowledge gap about this issue in the field of management science by tracking gender diversity in world-leading management journals over time.

The resulting article—co-authored by Brooke Gazdag, associate professor of management at Kühne Logistics University; Jamie Gloor, assistant professor of management, and Eugenia Bajet Mestre, Ph.D. candidate, both at the University of St. Gallen; and Cécile Emery, senior lecturer of organizational behavior at the University of Exeter—was just published in The Leadership Quarterly.

Through substantial efforts involving archives and libraries across five countries, the researchers constructed a comprehensive dataset. It lists 21,510 unique authors and 4,173 unique leaders in 11 top management journals from 1990 to 2022. “It’s a cool, novel dataset,” Tideman-Frappart said.

Analysis of the data showed that management science remains a male-dominated discipline at all levels. Only 32 of 135 editors, or close to 24%, were women. They were similarly underrepresented further down the hierarchy as associate editors, editorial board members, and authors—and having a woman editor did not appear to create a trickle-down effect. While the number of women in leading positions has increased over the past decades, this may be due simply to broader societal trends toward better representation.

“There has been progress, but it’s been slow, and there’s still a long way to go,” Tideman-Frappart said. “So if you want to have fair representation of women in the discipline sooner rather than later, it looks like we need intervention to get there.”

The authors recommend that editors and publishers aim to mitigate network effects, increase inclusion, and recognize and circumvent invisible barriers, for example by setting targets and transparency standards for women in leadership positions or providing training and support for aspiring women editors. This study, they hope, shows the importance of tracking data and will provide a benchmark for academic journals and starting point for changes to the discipline. “Our data is open access, so anybody can use it,” Tideman-Frappart said. “We really view our study as a conversation opener.”