Gender Disparities in Awards to Neuroscience Researchers

Women in academia receive fewer prestigious awards than their male counterparts. This gender gap may emerge purely from structural factors (e.g., gender differences in time spent in academia, institutional prestige, and academic performance), or from a combination of structural and psychological factors (e.g., gender schemas). To test these competing predictions, we assessed the independent contribution of year of degree, institutional prestige (a composite of prestige of PhD school and current affiliation), academic performance (total publications, total cites, and h-index), and gender to the prestige of awards earned by male (N = 298) and female (N = 134) academic neuroscientists. Award prestige was determined by an independent set of neuroscientists. Men earned more prestigious awards than women after controlling for institutional prestige, year of degree, and total publications. But after controlling for total citations or h-index, no gender difference appeared. Mediation analyses revealed that the gender disparity in awards was mediated by a gender difference in total cites and h-index. There was a reciprocal effect as well, in that the gender disparity in total cites and h-index was partially mediated by awards. These results point to an indirect path by which psychological factors may create gender disparities in academic awards: gender schemas may lead to women's papers receiving fewer citations than men's papers, resulting in more prestigious awards for men than for women. Additionally, our results suggest that gender disparities in awards and citations may reinforce each other. Practical implications for promoting gender equality in academic awards are discussed.