Abstract

GONZALEZ, Guadalupe; KESSLER, Gabriel  and  MURILLO, María Victoria. Gender Gaps in the Social Sciences: An Analysis of Citations and Scientific Topics in Argentina. Rev. interdiscip. estud. género Col. Méx. [online]. 2024, vol.10, e1015.  Epub Apr 05, 2024. ISSN 2395-9185.  https://doi.org/10.24201/reg.v10i1.1015.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of the researcher's gender on citation patterns and on the likelihood of focusing on gender issues among sociology and political science researchers of the Argentinean CONICET, the country’s most important scientific institution. The corpus consists of the three most cited papers of 253 scientists from both disciplines to which quantitative analysis techniques were applied. Our data verify the hypotheses based on research from the core countries and we found that female researchers are more likely to cite women and to study gender issues than male researchers, although the effect decreases for younger generations of researchers. In terms of disciplinary patterns, these gaps are narrower in sociology than in political science, because there are more female researchers in the former. Nevertheless, the gender gap persists even within thematic communities where gender issues are relevant. Showing its attenuation, but also its persistence, this research note calls for the continuation in following up lines of inquiry based on data that allow us to question our own academic practices.

Keywords : gender studies; research; social sciences; sociology; political science.