The Matilda Effect in Communication Research: The Effects of Gender and Geography on Usage and Citations Across 11 Countries

By Andrea Rajkó, Csilla Herendy, Manuel Goyanes & Marton Demeter

Are female scholars underrepresented in science? Does the gender of an author influence the impact and usage of a scientific paper? Is it more challenging for female scholars than for their male peers to join the club of the most productive elite scholars? The phenomenon of a potential gender bias in favor of male scholars was named the Matilda effect by Margaret W. Rossiter in 1993. Empirical evidence proves that female scholars experience negative discrimination against them worldwide and in virtually all disciplines. They are underrepresented in the higher ranks of academia, less likely to win scientific awards, and receive smaller grants less often than their male colleagues. Scholars have tried to explain gender bias through differences in household roles and family responsibilities, career absences, resource allocation, role stereotypes, the gendered nature of the labor market, and the distribution of salaries, academic rank, specialization, work climate, dropout probability, along with the numerous other ways in which these inequalities are being conceptualized and measured. As suggested by extant research, the accumulation of the advantages of male scientists is especially marked at elite scientific levels (i.e., the most productive and cited scholars).

Our study investigates gender inequalities amongst the most prolific scholars, specifically focusing on possible gender differences in citations and usage. While the gendered nature of citations is widely investigated in the literature, our study is the first to analyze usage (i.e., view counts for the published papers) and how this relates to productivity and impact. We used data on the 5500 most productive scholars in communication and media studies across 11 countries for the analysis.

Our research contributes to the literature on gender inequalities in academia in three ways. First, while several studies suggested that the participation of female scholars has grown in science over time and that the share of female authors has significantly increased in the last decades, our findings show a severe gender imbalance amongst the most prolific scholars in all 11 countries under study. This finding directly points to a glass ceiling, where paper production at the field level is disconnected from the top performance. While the field production is led by female first authors, the ranks of the most prolific scholars are still dominated by males. Second, our study found that female scholars are generally more viewed yet less cited than male peers. Thus—albeit in a more complex way than usually considered—our analysis suggests there may be a structural Matilda effect operating on both the production and performance levels in communication research. Our results point to a specific and gendered discrepancy between usage and impact. Usually, we might suggest that the more scholars read a paper, the more they cite it. However, according to our analysis, this is not true, as articles by female scholars were less cited while being more viewed (used). Thus, there is a real gender gap here, showing that although female authors’ pieces might be more exciting and appealing, when it comes to citing papers, academics might prefer to cite publications from male authors.

All in all, our study cannot rule out the possibility of the existence of either gender imbalances or gender inequalities. Still, it provides strong empirical evidence showing that the gender proportions among the most prolific scholars are far removed from normative considerations of gender equality. This has severe theoretical and practical implications: neglecting the top-level intellectual contributions of half of the scientific population. Conceptualizing this gender gap as a fair imbalance or deleterious inequality will not change the nature of the paradox itself. While women lead the field production, female scholars are systemically under-represented among the most prolific scholars in all countries under analysis.

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Article details

The Matilda Effect in Communication Research: The Effects of Gender and Geography on Usage and Citations Across 11 Countries
Andrea Rajkó, Csilla Herendy, Manuel Goyanes and Marton Demeter
First Published: January19, 2023
DOI: 10.1177/00936502221124389
Communication Research

About the authors

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Marton Demeter is an Associate Professor at the University of Public Service, Budapest at the Department of Social Communication, and he is the Head of Department for Science Strategy. He has extensively published on academic knowledge production in communication studies and beyond.

Manuel Goyanes (PhD) is interested in the influence of journalism and new technologies over citizens’ daily lives, as well as the effects of news consumption on citizens’ political knowledge and participation. He is also interested in global inequalities in academic participation, the systematic biases towards global South scholars, and publication trends in Communication.

Csilla Herendy (PhD) is an Associate Professor at the University of Public Service, Research Fellow at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Visiting Lecturer at the University of Bologna. She has published a significant number of academic publications and several books in the field of communication and UX research.

Andrea Rajkó (Ms, PhD) assistant professor, sociologist, taboo researcher. She completed a PhD programme at the Corvinus University of Budapest: PhD in Social Communication. She wrote her thesis on social mechanisms of creating modern taboos. Research areas: social functions of taboo and secret, communication in arts, means of visual expression, as well as poising career and private life in corporate cultures, especially in case of female executives and top managers.