Female-led papers are more likely to be rejected, male-led papers are more likely to be cited, men self-cite more often, and male-led research is perceived as of ‘higher scientific quality’
Reviews may be double blind, but editors can still see name and gender and reject papers before they can progress to peer-review
Men are twice as likely to be invited by journals to submit papers [5]
Women write about 45% of books in the US, but they are priced about 45% less than men’s [8]
Projects run by men get twice the budget and three times the people power [8]
Referrals to counselling services among university staff in the UK have increased between 123-424% since 2009, with women making up 70% of the referrals [9]
Elderly women are more likely to live in poverty: they have less access to household finances, and the global gender pay gap is 38% [10]
White women earn 70 cents to the white man’s dollar, and women of colour earn 30-50 cents depending on what type ‘of colour’ they are [10]
The lifetime wage gap between a white man and woman of colour in the US is nearly $2m before any of it has been invested [18]
Men objectively do less of the housework, but around 60% in western countries subjectively think they do “their fair share” [12]
Globally, 75% of unpaid work is done by women; an average of 3 to 6 hours per day, compared to men doing between 30 minutes and 2 hours per day [10]
If women’s care-giving labour were included, it would make up somewhere between 30-50% of reported GDP [8]
Working 60 hours of paid work per week for 30 years, triples the risk of women developing life-threatening diseases such as heart disease and cancer [10]
Women report their highest levels of life satisfaction only late in life, after their caring responsibilities have finally eased [13]
Not fun facts
Toxic femininity grows a gentle flower it then cuts down. She will grow back; a thorn in place of each cut. The scent is of liberation. Her roots will search for safety, joy, and connection.
Reading
This list was not intended to be exhaustive, but if you would like your work added to it please contact me. It was created in 2020 and has not been updated since.
The literature is a long and growing list. The one here is not exhaustive, and for every one that manages to get published in a scholarly outlet, who knows how many have had to find a less ‘valid’ home, or are not being spoken at all. Anecdotally, as I searched for this relevant research I noticed that for several articles ‘number of reads’ were in their thousands but ‘number of citations’ were less than 100. People are really interested in this topic, and lots of women have lots to say about it (and some men - thank you). But what’s with the gap?
Cited articles
[1] Crimmins, G. (2019). Strategies for resisting sexism in the academy: Higher education, gender and intersectionality. Palgrave Macmillan: Australia.
[2] Clark, L. (1977). Fact and fantasy: A recent profile of women in academia. Peabody Journal of Education, 54(2), 103–109.
[3] Savigny, H. (2014). Women, know your limits: Cultural sexism in academia. Gender and Education, 26(7), 794–809.
[4] Griffin, R. A. (2016). Black female faculty, resilient grit, and determined grace or “just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed”. The Journal of Negro Education, 85(3), 365–379.
[5] Holman, L., Stuart-Fox, D., Hauser, C. E. (2018). The gender gap in science: How long until women are equally represented? PLoS Biology, 16(4): e2004956.
[6] Sims, M. (2020). Bullshit towers: Neoliberalism and managerialism in universities in Australia. Peter Lang: Oxford, UK.
[7] Peterson, H. (2015). “Unfair to women”? Equal representation policies in Swedish academia. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 34(1), 55–66.
[8] Chemaly, S. (2018). Rage becomes her: The power of women’s anger. Simon & Schuster: US.
[9] Morrish, L. (2019). Pressure vessels: The epidemic of poor mental health among higher education staff. Oxford: UK.
[10] Perez, C. C. (2019). Invisible women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men. Chatto & Windus: UK.
[11] Nielsen, M. W. (2016). Limits to meritocracy? Gender in academic recruitment and promotion processes. Science and Public Policy, 43(3), 386-399.
[12] Craig, L. & Sawrikar, P. (2007). Housework and divorce: the division of domestic labour and relationship breakdown in Australia. Refereed paper for HILDA Conference, Melbourne, July.
[13] Rauch, J. (2018). The happiness curve: Why life gets better after midlife. Green Tree: UK.
[14] Baker, M. (2012). Gendered families, academic work and the ‘motherhood penalty’. Women’s Studies Journal, 26(1), 11–24.
[15] Husu, L. (2001). On metaphors on the position of women in academia and science. Nora: Nordic Journal of Women's Studies, 9(3), 172–181.
[16] Husu, L. (2005). Women’s work-related and family-related discrimination and support in academia. Gender realities: local and global. Advances in Gender Research, 9, 161–199.
[17] Deo, M. E. (2015). The ugly truth about legal academia. Brooklyn Law Review, 80(3), 943–1014.
[18] The State of the Gender Pay Gap in 2021. payscale.com
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Hall, M. E. L., Christerson, B., & Cunningham, S. (2010). Sanctified sexism: Religious beliefs and the gender harassment of academic women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 34, 181–185.
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Hughes, C. C., Schilt, K., Gorman, B. K., & Bratter, J. L. (2017). Framing the faculty gender gap: A view from STEM doctoral students. Gender, Work and Organization, 24(4), 398–416.
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King, E. B. (2008). The effect of bias on the advancement of working mothers: Disentangling legitimate concerns from inaccurate stereotypes as predictors of advancement in academe. Human Relations, 61(12), 1677–1711.
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Feeling dreamy?
Don’t just want to fix the system we’ve got by adjusting for unequal access one woman at a time (equity), but change it completely once and for all to make access equal no matter who you are (justice)?
An extract.
Sawrikar, P. (2020). Proposing a feminist funding model for academia while coping with the financial impact of Covid-19: A thought piece from Australia. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.32391.21924“Transforming the entire system to be gender-sensitive and -aware is a kind and fair reward system, in which the withdrawal of government funds has not become her direct problem to fix.
In the new system, any form of funding she is able to attract, and any type of pedagogy she implements or research she conducts, is not subject to elitism. This elitism is gendered; women are associated with the work that is less valued. Pretending this fact away, and then expecting women to strive for and be able to equally attain the more valued goals sets her up for both failure and ill-health.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death among women 65 years and over, but is underestimated, less well understood, less frequently diagnosed, and receives less patient care and national awareness-raising attention due to universalist assumptions and therefore the historical exclusion of women from clinical trials. Its risk reflects in part the accumulation of trauma and stress across the lifespan, including that globally 75% of care-giving labour is done, unpaid, by women. It makes work goals already unreachable within the annual work allocation model even more so.
More dangerously, it pits investment in and protection of institutional reputation against creativity and innovation, which in turn depend on diversity. It leads to conservative, fear-informed, politically-pleasing mindedness; the very opposite of what academia is naively believed by the public to stand for. Universities’ insidious need to depend on the government for substantial funding to survive, means it is forced to direct its business toward endeavours the government would be willing to fund.
Self-silencing through fear is a form of psychological abuse and financial control and exploitation. Staff from all backgrounds (humble white men included) have been known to describe working in universities as a traumatic experience, and some have likened it to being in a domestic violence relationship. She does not ‘just leave’ because the alternative – poverty and/or homelessness – is worse. She stays with the devil she knows, and remains quiet about the abuse she tolerates. If a university wants to have and be known for having an ambitious research agenda, it needs to seriously ask itself why, because that depends on further exploitation of staff. Is that what they are willing and willingly doing?”
People tend to get this - it’s a good visual aid.
But what happens when some people can’t see the fence because they don’t have one? What happens when the blocked access is invisible because it is not their lived experience?