The Matilda Effect in Science Communication

TLDR

The study surveyed 243 communication scholars who evaluated conference abstracts that were systematically varied for author gender and topic gender‑typing to test role‑congruity theory predictions. Results showed that male‑authored, male‑typed abstracts were judged of higher scientific quality and attracted the greatest collaboration interest, while the gender of the respondent had no effect.

Abstract

An experiment with 243 young communication scholars tested hypotheses derived from role congruity theory regarding impacts of author gender and gender typing of research topics on perceived quality of scientific publications and collaboration interest. Participants rated conference abstracts ostensibly authored by females or males, with author associations rotated. The abstracts fell into research areas perceived as gender-typed or gender-neutral to ascertain impacts from gender typing of topics. Publications from male authors were associated with greater scientific quality, in particular if the topic was male-typed. Collaboration interest was highest for male authors working on male-typed topics. Respondent sex did not influence these patterns.