Women in elite science jobs start out publishing way better work than men, but then they hit a much steeper wall later on.
March 30, 2026
Original Paper
Gender Differences in STEM Faculty Productivity: An Empirical Analysis from India
SSRN · 6487432
The Takeaway
While many studies focus on the 'productivity gap' (women publishing fewer papers), this shows a 'quality gap' that evolves in the opposite direction. Women initially clear a higher bar for quality, but the pressures of tenure or institutional environment appear to erode that quality advantage much faster than for men.
From the abstract
Empirical literature on gender gaps in research productivity in STEM demonstrates that on average female scientists publish less and are cited less than their male counterparts within Global North contexts. We extend this literature to the Global South by using a one-of-a-kind multi-decade panel dataset comprising 1,45,666 distinct publications across 2,693 distinct faculty members belonging to the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Our choice of context is motivated by the notable ca