Recent studies have demonstrated that women’s scholarship is less likely to be cited than men’s scholarship in political science publications. Likewise, female scholars are underrepresented in media, ranging from television interviews to op-eds. These gender gaps matter because citation counts and public profiles shape hiring and promotion decisions.
Recently, we and other scholars (see here, here, and here) have started to examine the gender gap in graduate syllabi. We argue that graduate syllabi have many downstream consequences for female scholars’ careers. What graduate students are required to read shapes their understanding of who are the leading scholars and what scholarship is deemed to be important.
By increasing public awareness of women’s representation in graduate training, this project hopes to lead to more scholars to consider gender diversity as they prepare their syllabi. Project deliverables include this dataset, a beta version of software that scholars will ultimately be able to use to diversify their syllabi, and relevant scholarly publications. By increasing understanding of women scholars’ representation in graduate training, our goal is to cultivate a more inclusive science and engineering workforce.
See NSF Award Abstract for more details on our project aims here.
Interested in Including the Expertise of Female Scholars?
- Find female political scientists available to speak to media at Women Also Know Stuff
- Assess gender representation in your own syllabi using Jane Lawrence Sumner‘s Gender Balance Assessment Tool
- Search our GRADS dataset to find female scholars whom your colleagues are citing in their syllabi.
Heidi Hardt