Sex differences in human performance have been documented across a wide array of human endeavours. Males tend to exhibit higher performance in intellectually demanding and competitive domains, and this difference tends to be more pronounced the higher the level of performance. Here, we analyse publishing performance for the whole population of…

Women have been underrepresented, and even excluded from academic life throughout history. As countries look to address ongoing inequality in academia, state-mandated gender quotas for academic boards and committees have emerged as a recommended practice in Europe. Although an increasing number of countries have adopted this policy model, little…

This article examines the predictors of gender-specific literature production in the field of social sciences and humanities (SSH). The research used bibliometric information on 1132 gender-related articles by authors with Romanian affiliations. Binary logistic regression shows the individual and institutional factors of a paper's likelihood of…

Which gender equality measures do Nordic universities use, and to what extent are the measures effective in increasing the share of women in top academic positions? Based on theories that distinguish between actor and structure-oriented measures, and between strategies of inclusion and transformation, we identified four types of measures: career…

The purpose of this paper is to gain a deeper understanding of gender stereotypes in academia by examining the informal aspects of the university as an organisation. We do so by using the concept of 'micro-political practices related to recruitment and progression in higher education institutions'. To increase our comprehension, we conducted…

Existing research has found that when a journal transitions from single-blind review to double-blind review, female authorship increases. This article reports the findings of a first-of-its-kind study designed to measure if transitioning to triple-blind review would further reduce gender bias in academic publishing. The findings as to whether…

This paper focuses on how female academics in UK universities use dress to construct their professional identity. The paper draws on the current literature on dress, body and academic identity and uses a theoretical framework of Goffman's work of performance and Bourdieu's concepts of cultural capital and habitus to explore these women's attempts…

The article analyses the effect of gender in professors' career advancement using data on the entire population of professors in the Italian university system, data on the National Scientific Qualification (NSQ) accreditation scheme, and data on scientific productivity (SciVal) for bibliometric scientific sectors. As NSQ accreditation is a…

Higher education and elite professional occupations are considered to be key sources of social mobility. In this paper, we suggest that examining patterns of admission into professional undergraduate programmes, a key route for entry into elite professional occupations, may provide important insights into social mobility through higher education.…

The proportion of women tends to decrease the higher the academic rank, following a global pattern. Sweden has taken comprehensive measures to decrease this gap across 30 years, and many countries are following a similar path. Yet today only 27% of faculty with the rank of professor in Sweden are female. A common explanation is that academia is…

The study examines the personal, social, and organizational barriers facing women in university leadership positions in South Asia, building on the cases of Malaysia and Bangladesh. We discussed the topic through the lens of interactionist feminist theory. Semi-structured interviews with 20 female deans from 12 public universities in Malaysia and…

University life can be stressful, and accurate measurement of perceived stress is important for research and practice. However, despite widespread use, disagreement persists regarding the latent structure of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), which poses serious consequences for how the measure should be administered. Furthermore, factorial…

In spite of a number of drivers for change in the pursuit of gender equality in higher education in the UK and beyond, the gender gap in research activity is still widely recognised across most subject disciplines. Over recent years, mentoring strategies have often been seen as the Alexandrian sword capable of cutting the gender deficit 'Gordian…

Despite a nearly 40-year history of research initiatives and interventions to recruit and retain women engineering students, women remain significantly underrepresented in engineering. Given the lack of progress, it seems clear that new lenses on the problem of underrepresentation warrant further attention. Higher education policies are one area…

We quantify the returns to higher education for degree disciplines, namely 'professional' degrees, Medicine/Dentistry, Law, Accountancy and Psychology, within the UK from 2007 to 2015. We estimate the returns to education in the form of employment and wage premia associated with each subject. Our analysis contributes to the existing literature on…