An advisor like me? Advisor gender and post-graduate careers in science

Patrick Gaule; Mario Piacentini

doi:10.1016/j.respol.2018.02.011

An advisor like me? Advisor gender and post-graduate careers in science

Patrick Gaule, Mario Piacentini^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

School of Economics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review

63 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We investigate whether having an advisor of the same gender is correlated with the productivity of PhD science students and their propensity to stay in academic science. Our analysis is based an original dataset – combined from dissertation abstracts, faculty directories and bibliometric data – covering nearly 20,000 PhD graduates and their advisors from U.S. chemistry departments. We find that students working with advisors of the same gender tend to be more productive during the PhD; and that female students working with female advisors are considerably more likely to become faculty themselves. We suggest that the under-representation of women in science and engineering faculty positions may perpetuate itself through the lower availability of same-gender advisors for female students.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	805-813
Number of pages	9
Journal	Research Policy
Volume	47
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2018.02.011
Publication status	Published - May 2018

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This project was financed by GACR grant 16-05082S . We thank Alena Bicakova, Ina Ganguli, Alexander Lembcke, Francesco Avvisati, Paula Stephan and three anonymous referees for suggestions and comments. Natalia Kobylkina and Tetiana Holets provided excellent research assistance. We are grateful to Andrew Downing of CERGE-EI’s Academic Skill Center for careful professional editing. All errors are our own.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier B.V.

Research Groups and Themes

ECON CEPS Education
ECON Applied Economics

Keywords

Doctoral research
Gender
Role models
Universities

Access to Document

10.1016/j.respol.2018.02.011

Handle.net

Persistent link

Cite this

@article{541add45d599446da2ceb1e5ae777cc9,

title = "An advisor like me? Advisor gender and post-graduate careers in science",

abstract = "We investigate whether having an advisor of the same gender is correlated with the productivity of PhD science students and their propensity to stay in academic science. Our analysis is based an original dataset – combined from dissertation abstracts, faculty directories and bibliometric data – covering nearly 20,000 PhD graduates and their advisors from U.S. chemistry departments. We find that students working with advisors of the same gender tend to be more productive during the PhD; and that female students working with female advisors are considerably more likely to become faculty themselves. We suggest that the under-representation of women in science and engineering faculty positions may perpetuate itself through the lower availability of same-gender advisors for female students.",

keywords = "Doctoral research, Gender, Role models, Universities",

author = "Patrick Gaule and Mario Piacentini",

note = "Funding Information: This project was financed by GACR grant 16-05082S . We thank Alena Bicakova, Ina Ganguli, Alexander Lembcke, Francesco Avvisati, Paula Stephan and three anonymous referees for suggestions and comments. Natalia Kobylkina and Tetiana Holets provided excellent research assistance. We are grateful to Andrew Downing of CERGE-EI{\textquoteright}s Academic Skill Center for careful professional editing. All errors are our own. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 Elsevier B.V.",

year = "2018",

month = may,

doi = "10.1016/j.respol.2018.02.011",

language = "English",

volume = "47",

pages = "805--813",

journal = "Research Policy",

issn = "0048-7333",

publisher = "Amsterdam:Elsevier",

number = "4",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - An advisor like me? Advisor gender and post-graduate careers in science

AU - Gaule, Patrick

AU - Piacentini, Mario

N1 - Funding Information: This project was financed by GACR grant 16-05082S . We thank Alena Bicakova, Ina Ganguli, Alexander Lembcke, Francesco Avvisati, Paula Stephan and three anonymous referees for suggestions and comments. Natalia Kobylkina and Tetiana Holets provided excellent research assistance. We are grateful to Andrew Downing of CERGE-EI’s Academic Skill Center for careful professional editing. All errors are our own. Publisher Copyright: © 2018 Elsevier B.V.

PY - 2018/5

Y1 - 2018/5

N2 - We investigate whether having an advisor of the same gender is correlated with the productivity of PhD science students and their propensity to stay in academic science. Our analysis is based an original dataset – combined from dissertation abstracts, faculty directories and bibliometric data – covering nearly 20,000 PhD graduates and their advisors from U.S. chemistry departments. We find that students working with advisors of the same gender tend to be more productive during the PhD; and that female students working with female advisors are considerably more likely to become faculty themselves. We suggest that the under-representation of women in science and engineering faculty positions may perpetuate itself through the lower availability of same-gender advisors for female students.

AB - We investigate whether having an advisor of the same gender is correlated with the productivity of PhD science students and their propensity to stay in academic science. Our analysis is based an original dataset – combined from dissertation abstracts, faculty directories and bibliometric data – covering nearly 20,000 PhD graduates and their advisors from U.S. chemistry departments. We find that students working with advisors of the same gender tend to be more productive during the PhD; and that female students working with female advisors are considerably more likely to become faculty themselves. We suggest that the under-representation of women in science and engineering faculty positions may perpetuate itself through the lower availability of same-gender advisors for female students.

KW - Doctoral research

KW - Gender

KW - Role models

KW - Universities

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85042659564&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.respol.2018.02.011

DO - 10.1016/j.respol.2018.02.011

M3 - Article (Academic Journal)

AN - SCOPUS:85042659564

SN - 0048-7333

VL - 47

SP - 805

EP - 813

JO - Research Policy

JF - Research Policy

IS - 4

ER -

An advisor like me? Advisor gender and post-graduate careers in science

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Research Groups and Themes

Keywords

Access to Document

Handle.net

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Cite this