Glass ceilings in research: Evidence from a national program in Uruguay

Daniel Bukstein and Nestor Gandelman

Research Policy, 2019, vol. 48, issue 6, 1550-1563

Abstract: Female researchers have lower probability than male researchers of being accepted into the largest national research support program in Uruguay. Age, scientific productivity, teaching activities and previous applications explains 5.2 percentage points of the 7.1 point gender acceptance probability gap. The remaining 1.9% can be attributed to gender discrimination. This phenomenon is stronger at the top 2 levels (out of 4) of the program evidencing glass ceilings. Results are robust to issues of simultaneity (research productivity affecting probability of being accepted and vice versa), joint determination and correlation of variables and productivity effects at early stages of career development. The paper tests four hypotheses that are likely to produce a glass ceiling in any R&D incentive schemes: male overrepresentation in the initial setup of the program, male overrepresentation on evaluation committees and two types of field-level effects (a pure composition effect without discrimination and differentiated discriminatory effects by fields). We show evidence of gender bias in the initial setup of the program and bias in the gender structure of committees. Nevertheless, these hypotheses have little quantitative power to explain the glass ceiling. The pure field composition effect is also not important. We find solid evidence of glass ceilings in the three areas where women are most active: health-related sciences, natural sciences and humanities. On the other hand, we find no such effects in social sciences, agricultural sciences or engineering.

Keywords: Gender discrimination; Glass ceiling; Probability decomposition; Science and technology; Academia; Sistema Nacional de investigadores (SNI); Uruguay (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J4 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733319300708
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Glass Ceiling in Research: Evidence from a National Program in Uruguay (2017)
Working Paper: Glass ceiling in research: evidence from a national program in Uruguay (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:48:y:2019:i:6:p:1550-1563

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2019.03.007

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().