What percentage of political science majors are female

FAQ What percentage of political science majors are female

By many measures, women in political science do not achieve the same success as men. Their ranks among full professors are lower; their teaching evaluations by students are more critical; they hold less prestigious committee appointments; and, according to a new study, their work is cited less frequently.

Why? And what can be done to change this? Those questions absorbed two panels here at the American Political Science Association's annual meeting on Thursday. The problems are not new, and most likely not limited to political science. But the researchers who presented their findings hope that hard data and some serious self-reflection will spark change within the discipline.

"We are not the first people to talk about bias in academe, but the trick has been to show evidence that in fact this exists," said Barbara F. Walter, a political-science professor at the University of California at San Diego and co-author of a new paper showing a gender citation gap in international relations.

In that paper, "The Gender Citation Gap," Ms. Walter and her colleagues found that even after controlling for many variables—including what the subjects wrote about, the methodology they used, and where they worked—women were cited less frequently than men were. In their review of more than 3,000 journal articles published from 1980 to 2006, articles by men received an average of 4.8 more citations than were articles by women. (The average number of citations per article over all was 25.)

The authors came up with two explanations: Women tend to cite their own work less than men do, which can have a multiplying effect as time goes by. And men, who dominate the profession, tend to cite other men more than they cite women.

The state of gender politics in political science is not nearly as “far from ideal” as it once was (Judith Shklar, quoted in Hoffman 1989, 833) but neither is it gender-neutral. The “inhospitable institutional climate” cited in the 2005 American Political Science Association (APSA) Report on the Status of Women in Political Science persists in multiple subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) ways, as well as in certain spaces (i.e., departments, conferences, and subfields) far more than in others.

One of the most obvious areas of gender disproportionality is in the methodology subfield. When areas of the field lag behind in gender integration, it is cause for concern. This is particularly acute for political methodology, however, because it is both a gender-integration laggard and the area of the field that develops the “rules of the game” for good political science. As such, political methodology is not simply a standalone subfield in the discipline; it also informs the work done in most other subfields. The lack of diversity in political methodology, therefore, raises the uncomfortable possibility that some of our “rules of the game” may embed biases based on the relative privilege of those making them.

Given the disproportionate focus on and status of highly complex statistical methodology within political science as a whole, the fact that such methodology is far more likely to be the province of men than women is concerning, from both a methodological standpoint and a gendered perspective. As practitioners and critical observers of this discipline, and as methodology instructors ourselves, we are concerned about the increasing status of complex statistical methodology (and the perception that it is somehow “better” than qualitative or far simpler quantitative work) as well as persisting gender disparities in the field—and we see these trends as linked. To be clear, our aim is not to rehash the qualitative-versus-quantitative debate but rather to add a new angle: this cleavage in research methods is not gender-neutral.

Anecdotes like Tamara’s abound but systematic data on these questions can be difficult to find or collect. Therefore, this article presents a theory based on initial data rather than well-tested hypotheses, but these are ideas worthy of discussion and further testing. What systematic data we have found—coupled with useful previous literature and our own experiences—allow us to posit a complex and interactive set of gender-related forces operating within political science and particularly affecting graduate students.

Specifically, we suggest that there are two contextual themes and four overlapping processes that operate individually and jointly to reinforce—and reproduce—the overrepresentation of men in subfields that emphasize complex quantitative methodology (including formal theory). The two contextual factors are the discipline’s long history of male domination and the more recent hegemony of quantitative methodology within political methodology and political science overall. Within this context, we find evidence suggesting four interconnected but distinct processes that continue to advantage men within the discipline overall but particularly in areas privileging complex quantitative methodology: (1) initial departmental admission-selection biases by gender; (2) subfield-selection biases by gender; (3) gendered attrition in response to experiences in the field; and (4) gender bias in disappointment when methodology dominates substantive content.

This article examines and explains each element (contextual and procedural) in turn, using the evidence we can find. Overall, we call this a theory of gendered selection and survival biases. Initial selection biases favoring graduate-student applicants with highly quantitative backgrounds are more likely to result in men than in women in graduate cohorts. This is especially true in the study of political methodology because of the gender breakdown in college studies in math, hard science, and statistics. Furthermore, methodological practices that confuse the ends (substance) with the means (methods), we suggest, are more of a turnoff within the field for women as a group than for men as a group—although they also turn off many men who care deeply about the political substance of political science.

Within this context, we find evidence suggesting four interconnected but distinct processes that continue to advantage men within the discipline overall but particularly in areas privileging complex quantitative methodology: (1) initial departmental admission-selection biases by gender; (2) subfield-selection biases by gender; (3) gendered attrition in response to experiences in the field; and (4) gender bias in disappointment when methodology dominates substantive content.

The result is a concentration of women in some subfields (especially comparative politics) and the dominance of political methodology by men, which has adverse effects on the discipline. A more inclusive science, which embraces multiple methods as well as types of people, will be stronger for the wider set of perspectives and questions brought to bear on major political problems. Using multiple methods within a single project also makes it stronger by allowing for triangulation of results arrived at through different pathways, giving greater confidence in a study’s findings. Diversity of thought, perspectives, concerns, questions, and approaches makes for better as well as more-inclusive science.

In the conclusion, we provide suggestions for best practices that departments can engage in (based on both real-world examples and theory) to move toward this better, more inclusive science. Many departments and professors work extremely hard to combat the gender imbalances we describe, often with success, and we want to disseminate their examples while urging others to do the same.

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