Moreover, research topics differ in the extent to which they are associated with stereotypically male or female characteristics. For instance, within com- munication research, the area of media effects on children could induce more stereotypically female attributes such as nurturing, caring, and so on, whereas political communication research might be more linked to stereotypically male characteristics such as competitiveness, assertiveness, and so on. Hence, a female communication researcher who works on political communication may induce more incongruity between female gender role and scientist role than a female scholar who works on children and media.

The researchers took abstracts in male-typed, female-typed, and gender neutral subject areas, then they randomly generated names from the Social Security Administration database of popular names and affixed them to each abstract in a rather complicated way that may be best just to allow them to explain it:

Respondents were presented with 2 neutral-typed abstracts (1 with two female authors, 1 with two male authors), 2 female- typed abstracts (1 with two female authors, 1 with two male authors), and 2 male-typed abstracts (1 with two female authors, 1 with two male authors). To vary the target abstracts and base participants’ ratings on a larger stimuli set, 6 abstracts were drawn for each individual participant from the 12 abstracts listed as female-typed, male-typed, or gender-neutral in Table 1, based on a rotation across participants. However, across the sample, all 12 abstracts were utilized, though in different combinations of 6 each for indi- vidual participants. The remaining 9 abstracts from the set of 15 were dis- played as distracters. Six of them featured a female and a male author, with author sequence and research areas counterbalanced. In addition, 2 distracter abstracts from gender-neutral research areas and 1 from a male-typed area were presented as single-authored by a male or with four authors (two females and two males, with genders alternating in the author sequence), in contrast to all abstracts being presented with two authors. The abstract with four authors was always presented last and served as basis for a question on recall of the author information.

Unsurprisingly, male authors in male-typed research came out on top of the measure of “scientific quality.”

The authors believe this is because gender stereotypes are strongest in fields where one gender dominates. The authors conclude, “The overall conclusion is that male scholars will have a much smoother ride, especially if they work on male-typed topics.”

Oh, and this study? Conducted by two female researchers and one male researcher: Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, Carroll J. Glynn and Michael Huge.

h/t SciLogs