Is that scientific research "excellent", "novel" or "unique"? Men are more likely than women to describe their research with those words, according to a new study.
The study found articles led by male authours used at least one of the "positive words" in the title or summary 12.2 percent of the time, compared with 10.9 percent of articles with female lead authors. The diffrence was even bigger in more influential journals. The difference remained even when the similar fields published in the same journal in the same year, suggesting this wasn't because men were doing more cutting-edge research than women.
But does the diference in the language use actually make any difference? The researchers found that articles that made use of the glowing terms were cited more by other scientists. Citations are often used to judge a researcher's influence and many organizations use the number of citations a researcher has in decisions on recruitment, promotion, pay and funding. "These findings suggest that differences in the degree of self-promotion may contribute to the well-documented gender gaps in science," the researchers said.
Is the solution for women to promote themselves more like men? Women will not necessarily be successful if they try to use more positive words to describe their research, said Jocallyn Clark, executive editor at the medical journal The Lancet. "Women are socialized from a young age to be less bold than men," said Clark. "But we're also taught that if we breach those gender norms, we'll meet with punishments."
One reason gender differences in the use of positive words may be bigger in influential journals is they tend to have more copy editing done, "often using aggressive strategies that fundamentally alter the language sued in reporting findings"-that is, editors and peer reviewers all have a role to play. "I think for me this piece of research speaks to the importance of it being more of a structural problem than one that's going to go away by asking women to talk about their work differently," Clark said.
