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Gender discrepancies in publication productivity of high-performing life science graduate students

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  • Graddy-Reed, Alexandra
  • Lanahan, Lauren
  • Eyer, Jonathan

Abstract

Despite equal matriculation into life science graduate programs, the gender gap persists for later-stage professional outcomes. To understand this divergence, we examine graduate training and use the competitive NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program to identify high-quality life science students that are awardees and honorable mentions. We use a differencing research design to estimate the relative difference of the R&D award across gender on publication trajectory. The results of the triple difference estimation show a negative effect for women compared to men from the award. We investigate the driver of this effect by examining trends within gender and find a large, positive effect of the award for men but fail to find such evidence for female awardees. Our results indicate different signaling effects across gender even though the funding is meritocratic.

Suggested Citation

  • Graddy-Reed, Alexandra & Lanahan, Lauren & Eyer, Jonathan, 2019. "Gender discrepancies in publication productivity of high-performing life science graduate students," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(9), pages 1-1.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:respol:v:48:y:2019:i:9:30
    DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2019.103838
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    Cited by:

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    3. Azoulay, Pierre & Greenblatt, Wesley H. & Heggeness, Misty L., 2021. "Long-term effects from early exposure to research: Evidence from the NIH “Yellow Berets”," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(9).
    4. Walters, Cyrill & Mehl, Graeme G. & Piraino, Patrizio & Jansen, Jonathan D. & Kriger, Samantha, 2022. "The impact of the pandemic-enforced lockdown on the scholarly productivity of women academics in South Africa," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(1).
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    6. Marina Pilkina & Andrey Lovakov, 2022. "Gender disparities in Russian academia: a bibliometric analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(6), pages 3577-3591, June.
    7. Muscio, Alessandro & Vallanti, Giovanna, 2024. "The gender gap in PhD entrepreneurship: Why balancing employment in academia really matters," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(1).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    R&D; Gender; Productivity; Life sciences; Graduate students;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H5 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies
    • O3 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights
    • O38 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Government Policy
    • I25 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Economic Development
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

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