Knowledge Production in Men’s and Women’s Studies: A Comparative Bibliometric Analysis

Although prior research has examined gender inequalities in academic publishing, systematic comparisons between men’s and women’s studies remain limited. To address this gap, this study provides a comparative, large-scale analysis of men’s and women’s studies journals to examine how gender-related knowledge is produced and organized within academia. Using 4,175 articles from men’s studies journals and 67,421 articles from women’s studies journals indexed in OpenAlex, we analyze researcher profiles, collaboration patterns, co-authorship network structures, topic modeling, cross-field citation patterns, and Global South participation and local representation in knowledge production. Researcher profile analysis reveals distinct gender and publication concentration patterns across the two fields, while collaboration analyses show that both rely heavily on domestic and same-gender collaborations. Based on our network analysis, women’s studies reveal larger but more dispersed networks with higher modularity, whereas men’s studies show a more concentrated collaborative structure. Across both fields, papers on the Global South come from a small set of countries and are often written by researchers based outside the regions studied, indicating that knowledge about these areas is produced largely from the global North. Cross-field citation analysis further reveals a persistent asymmetry in intellectual exchange, with men’s studies drawing substantially more on women’s studies than vice versa. By integrating bibliometric, network, and topic analyses, this study advances a comparative understanding of the intellectual and social structures underlying men’s and women’s studies, offering new insights into how institutional histories leave their mark on the production, circulation, and recognition of gender-related knowledge.