Gender gap and women’s leadership in finance research: analyzing the last decade (2014-2023)
Pedro Seva-Larrosa, Giuseppe Modaffari, Francisco García-LilloPurpose
The paper aims to analyze women’s participation and leadership in finance research over the last decade. To this end, the research considers three streams: (1) female authorship of scientific articles on finance, (2) the gender gap in authorship and (3) female participation in high-impact articles.
Design/methodology/approach
The research is supported by the quantitative methodology of bibliometric analysis. The authors used a unique data set of 10,457 academic articles published in 250 scientific journals by 26,858 (co)authors from 123 countries. The data were obtained from the Web of Science Core Collection database. Subsequently, the gender of the 26,858 (co)authors was determined to analyze the role of women in financial research.
Findings
The findings show that over the last decade (2014–2023) female authors in finance articles averaged around 22%. However, at the beginning of the period women accounted for 20.1% of (co)authors, while at the end of the period their representation reached 26.7%. Consequently, the gender gap dropped from 59.8% to 46.5%. Although the gender gap remained evident throughout the period analyzed, the data reveal advances in women’s participation within academia. Regarding women’s leadership in finance research, results reveal that only 21.4% of authors of the most cited papers are women and in just 24% of these high-impact articles a woman appeared as the first author, evidencing persistent male dominance in leadership positions within academic finance.
Research limitations/implications
Some limitations should be acknowledged, such as the small subsample used for the analysis of women’s leadership and its descriptive nature, which may limit the generalizability of the results as well as the identification of the causes behind the gender gap. Likewise, the use of a binary variable to determine gender (male or female) could also be considered a limitation.
Originality/value
This study advances the gender and finance literature, going beyond the analysis of authorship by incorporating women’s academic leadership as a key contribution, a perspective largely absent from previous research. By distinguishing between barriers to women’s access and barriers to academic promotion, the study provides new insights into gender inequalities in the academic labor market within a context of neoliberalization and marketization of higher education. Likewise, it fosters debate on the Sustainable Development Goals (5 and 10) by examining gender equality in research and its connection to the academic labor market.