Research Magazine 2024

Gender in IS Research: Who's on top? Aaron French, Amy Woszczynski, Carole Hollingsworth, and David Rusk

Coles Working Paper Series, FALL23-04, November 2023

OVERVIEW

This research evaluates Information Systems (IS) research publications based on gender using the Senior Scholars’ Basket of Eight (B8) journals through the lens of social roles theory. Despite notable efforts for gender inclusion and equity, a disparity between research output in premier IS journals persists. We used an archival research method to evaluate gender differences of academic researchers based on scholarly publications in the 21st century. We gathered all non-editorial and non-book-review articles published in the B8 over two decades (2001-2020) and coded each author as male, female, or other based on self-identified criteria. The data includes over 5,000 articles with almost 14,000 authors, of which almost 6,000 were unique. Then we evaluated publication statistics and differences for gender in IS research. In total, just under 27% of all authors were women, with women appearing in about 23% of publications. These percentages are lower than expected based on the representation of women in IS academia. While both men and women are increasing their output in these premier journals, the output of men is increasing at a faster rate than that of their women colleagues, further widening the publication gap and projecting even greater disparities in the future. The paper concludes with a discussion of findings, implications, and recommendations for the field of IS.

50 | Working Papers

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