Female scientists wait up to ten weeks longer than men for publication!

After analyzing more than 3,000 publications in the field of economics and an extended sample of 6,000 articles with also articles from the social and political sciences, all published between 1963 and 2024, the authors find that articles by female scientists in mixed-gender teams take an average of 9% longer to be accepted, which corresponds to about five to six additional weeks.
When female researchers publish alone or in all-female teams, the delay is even longer than for male authors, at 20% or about 10 additional weeks. 

No clear cause

According to the researchers, it is difficult to identify a single clear cause for this gender-specific difference in publication time.  “We observed differences across research fields, with some fields showing a larger gender gap than others. In general, we find that the gender gap tends to become smaller once more female researchers become active in a field. But it’s also field specific. For example, female researchers need to wait longer in the fields of finance and economic growth compared to macroeconomics. This might be due to different social norms across fields. Social norms are informal rules of expected behavior and these rules may include biases towards female researchers”, says Prof. Dr. Stephan Bruns of the Centre for Environmental Sciences at UHasselt, who conducts research on how scientific knowledge is produced.

The researchers also conclude that it is less likely that the gender gap in time to get publications accepted is due to the behavior of female researchers, such as taking on more other responsibilities, including household tasks and child care. If that were the case, it would imply that female researchers behave this way in one field but not at all in another. 

The researchers also examined whether the gap could be explained by differences in research quality. That hypothesis does not hold. Research conducted by women is cited more frequently than research by men, suggesting that it is, if anything, considered more valuable.

Link to the article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292125002545#fig0001