Are female researchers more efficient? An analysis of gender in a Spanish technological university

Despite the progress made in terms of equality, there is still significant underrepresentation of women in higher education institutions, particularly in science and technology-oriented universities. The aim of this paper is to measure the efficiency of the research activity undertaken in a Spanish technological university, with a focus on the distribution by gender in the different disciplines. First, a non-concave metafrontier is estimated, which allows the introduction of different researcher profiles, by major scientific fields, and can be used to identify not only the areas that demonstrate better management of their research, development and innovation activity, but also the relative position of women scientists. Second, the cross-efficiency method is employed to construct a synthetic index, which in turn is used to establish a ranking of each of the knowledge areas that make up the analysed fields. The results show that women slightly outperform men in terms of research efficiency. University research support policies that apply efficiency criteria as the key to the distribution of grants rather than performance measured in terms of the volume of research output would improve the situation of women scientists and the incentives provided.