Are there gender differences among researchers from industrial/organizational psychology?

Questions about gender differences in the workplace usually attract much attention—but often generate more heat than light. To examine gender differences in several facets of scientific productivity and impact, a quantitative, scientometric approach is employed. Analyzing a sample of industrial and organizational psychologists (N authors = 4234; N publications = 46,656), this study raises both questions and concerns about gender differences in research, by showing that female and male I–O psychologists differ with regard to publication output (fewer publications authored by female researchers), impact (heterogeneous, indicator-dependent gender differences), their publication career courses (male researchers’ periods of active publishing last longer and show longer interruptions), and research interests (only marginal gender differences). In order to get a glimpse of future developments, we repeated all analyses with the student subsample and found nearly no gender differences, suggesting a more gender-balanced future. Thus, this study gives an overview over the status quo of gender differences in an entire psychological sub-discipline. Future research will have to examine whether these gender differences are volitional in nature or the manifestation of external constraints.