Gender, inter/disciplinarity and marginality in the social sciences and humanities: A comparison of six disciplines

Women's Studies International Forum Available online 29 May 2018 In Press, Corrected ProofWhat are Corrected Proof articles? Women's Studies International Forum Author links open overlay panelRebeccaPearseaJames N.HitchcockbHelenKeanec a University of Sydney, Australia b University of Technology Sydney, Australia c Australian National University, Australia Received 3 January 2018, Revised 11 May 2018, Accepted 12 May 2018, Available online 29 May 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2018.05.007 Get rights and content Highlights • Gender inequalities persist in the practice and organization of disciplinary knowledge. • The impact of feminist knowledge on social science disciplines has been uneven. • Citation patterns reveal disciplinary differences in patterns of knowledge circulation. • Interdisciplinarity mediates the status of feminist knowledge within disciplines. Abstract Within different social science and humanities disciplines, there has been debate about the impact of feminist knowledges and scholarship by women in general. This study systematically investigates the differential impact of feminist thought on disciplinary domains in the social sciences and humanities. Using quantitative citation data from the Web of Science, we investigate the extent to which gender-related research is produced and circulated in the ‘centres’ of six disciplines: economics, history; international relations; political science; philosophy and sociology. We then analyse the production and circulation of knowledge produced in feminist disciplinary sub-fields. The study findings show gender inequality persists, evidenced by gender representation in editorial positions and authorship. The proportion of gender-related research articles published in sociology is significantly greater than in economics, history, international relations, philosophy and political science. Interdisciplinarity appears to mediate the status of feminist knowledge within disciplines. The marginalisation of feminist discipline subfields appears to be constituted through practices of strong disciplinarity. Keywords Gender Feminist knowledges Disciplinarity Interdisciplinarity Sociology of knowledge Citation analysis Introduction Feminist scholarship is produced and circulated within every social science and humanities discipline, albeit on different scales and with different impacts on disciplinary knowledge. Feminist and gender-related scholarship contributes to important advances of knowledge in many arenas. Across different disciplines, feminist research has delivered new empirical evidence, new theories, perspectives and debates. In this process, orthodoxies have been challenged but in many respects not transformed. Whether feminist thought, and gender research more broadly, has been enabled and recognised as authoritative knowledge in different disciplinary domains remains contested (Jenkins & Keane, 2014). The issues run deeper than individual preferences or biases, to how disciplinary power and institutional centres of gravity are constituted (Jenkins, 2017). As part of a broader research project on the relationship between gender and notions of excellence in the social science disciplines, this study compares patterns of publishing and citation across six disciplines: economics, history, international relations, philosophy, political science and sociology. The existing literature on feminist scholarship within the social sciences and humanities provides crucial insights into the reproduction of gender hierarchies within academia as well as the sources of change (Maliniak, Powers, & Walter, 2013; Østby et al., 2013; Teele & Thelen, 2017; Woolley, 2005). However, it tends to be focused on one discipline at a time. With systematic comparison between disciplines, we can gain understanding of the differential impact of feminist knowledge on different disciplinary fields. Feminist scholars have long critiqued the multiple ways through which the organization of disciplinary knowledge can produce and re-produce ‘centres’ of scholarship that designate the problems, theories and methods of a field (Smith, 1995; Stanley, 1997). The ongoing reproduction of the boundaries of disciplinary centres can serve to marginalise and inhibit feminist knowledge production and circulation. Feminist economists for instance, have identified the ways in which the dominance of the neoclassical economic paradigm creates a closed system of androcentric ideas, where any attempts to debate these epistemological foundations are rendered ‘not economics’ (Meagher & Nelson, 2004: 102). The construction of economics as a science of rational choice invokes the imagery of Rational Economic Man (Hollis & Nell, 1975), and in a similar fashion, the lasting effects of 17th century rationalism in philosophy have constructed the Man of Reason (Lloyd, 1984). These ideals are both a cognitive structure and set of social practices that delimit the terrain of authoritative disciplinary knowledge and serve to marginalise feminist economics and philosophy. Diagnoses of the impact of feminist scholarship in other social science and humanities disciplines present a more positive picture, while at the same time emphasising a continuing struggle for change. The impact of feminist thought in political science has been described as ‘additive’ rather than transformative (Johnson, 2014; Sawer, 2004), ‘unevenly mainstreamed’ in sociology (Walby, 2011) and in history feminist research has been identified as a dynamic tradition that can never ‘inhabit the mainstream’, but where marginality and the feminist tradition of ‘perpetual interrogation’ is a source of strength (Morgan, 2009: 399). Crucially, investigating the significance and impact of feminist and gender scholarship within disciplinary mainstreams is not a simple matter of inclusion versus exclusion from fixed disciplinary boundaries (Skeggs, 2008). There are multiple dimensions of change and dynamic processes of ‘boundary-making’ and ‘boundary crossing’ (Klein, 1996; Messer-Davidow, Shumway, & Sylvan, 1993). Feminist subfields have been created within disciplines. This has involved collective organising to build capacity for feminist knowledge production and circulation. Alongside efforts to create new teaching programs, specialist teaching posts, scholarships and prizes, and professional associations, the establishment of feminist journals has been crucial to the production and circulation of feminist knowledge within and across different disciplinary domains. The boundary-crossing character of feminist scholarship shows up clearly in the data we have collated. Yet the broader picture of disciplinary characteristics and patterns gives continuing cause for concern. While women have entered academic workforces in considerable numbers since the 1970s, there is no uniform gender parity across the social sciences and humanities, with some disciplines standing out as having striking under-representation of women e.g. philosophy, economics and international relations (Hancock, Baum, & Breuning, 2013; McElroy, 2013; Paxton, Figdor, & Tiberius, 2012). Citations are an important act of communication in academic scholarship, and they are increasing important for career progression in university systems that have become focused on measuring research ‘impact’. Gender dimensions of authorship and citation practices have been analysed in economics (Woolley, 2005), international relations (Maliniak et al., 2013), political science (Teele & Thelen, 2017) and philosophy (Haslanger, 2008). The existing evidence points to ongoing inequalities in knowledge production and circulation in these disciplines and uneven impacts across fields, however no systematic studies have investigated these differences. Using quantitative bibliometric data, we focus on three connected questions about knowledge production and circulation: 1. To what extent is there gender inequality in knowledge production in different social sciences and humanities disciplines? 2. To what extent is feminist and gender-related research produced within disciplinary centres? 3. How does discipline-specific feminist knowledge circulate within and/or outside disciplinary centres? We answer the first question by investigating the gender of journal editors and authors of highly cited papers in six different social science and humanities disciplines. The second question is answered through analysis of the rates of publications that address gender, women and/or feminism as a topic. We report on citation patterns for articles published in highly ranked journals in the disciplinary fields of: economics, history, international relations, political science, philosophy and sociology. The third question is answered through analysis of citation patterns for articles published in discipline-specific feminist journals. Before commencing this analysis we provide a contextual overview of the literature on disciplinary knowledge and the impact of feminism in the social sciences and humanities. Gender, feminism and disciplinary knowledge Disciplines are institutions within the global economy of knowledge. That is, disciplines are organised social practices and norms, embedded in power relations and economies of knowledge production and circulation (Messer-Davidow et al., 1993). While they might appear as natural and stable knowledge formations, disciplines are historically novel. It was only in the late 19th century that disciplines, departments and university institutions were consolidated in the Western world (Max-Neef, 2005). Feminists have identified disciplines as social structures that perpetuate gender hierarchy (DuBois et al., 1987; Millman & Kanter, 1975; Sherman & Beck, 1979). Feminism within academia has spread across the social sciences and humanities as women have entered academic workforces in growing numbers from the 1970s onwards. Feminist knowledge is diverse; however some shared characteristics of feminist knowledge can be identified across the social sciences and humanities (see Cook & Fonow, 1986; Harding, 1987; Seiz, 1995; Tickner, 2005). Key features of feminist knowledge include: 1) attention to the significance of gender relations in social life, politics, economies and throughout history; 2) the development of new methodologies and concepts; 3) a critique of positivism; and 4) emphasis on challenging masculine normativity and promoting gender equality in the academy and society in general (Harding & Norberg, 2014; Hawkesworth, 1994). In brief, feminists have put gender relations on the agenda for social scientists and humanities scholars, thereby challenging the gender-blind foundations of disciplinary knowledge and academic knowledge production. In 1998 Australian feminist historian Ann Curthoys published a review essay discussing the rise of gender as a concept and category in the social sciences (Curthoys, 1998). In this essay, as she recently reflected, she argued that gender had become ‘a major site of theoretical innovation, epistemological and methodological inquiry and substantive empirical research’ (Curthoys, 2014, p.115). However, she noted that the influence of feminist scholarship across the disciplines was uneven. Curthoys judged sociology and anthropology as the disciplines most engaged in gendered analyses, with history the most transformed by feminist knowledge. Law and economics were the disciplines least impacted by gendered analyses. In the middle were philosophy and political science. Two decades on from Curthoys' review, a pattern of uneven influence persists (Jenkins & Keane, 2014). Feminist economists, philosophers and political scientists have highlighted the persistent and powerful gendered norms of authoritative knowledge that act to marginalise different forms of understanding in their fields. Feminist economists have argued that the dominant definition of economics as the science of rational choice constructs the “chooser” as homo economicus, an imagined radically autonomous and self-interested individual (Meagher & Nelson, 2004). Feminist challenges to this economic orthodoxy have involved first principles critique of foundational concepts as well as the use of mathematical techniques, which critics argue are flawed abstractions that create inaccurate accounts of economic phenomena. Beyond the mainstream, feminist economics has established as a distinct sub-field inclusive of more relational theories of economic actors and diverse methodologies (e.g. Barker & Kuiper, 2003; Kuiper & Sap, 1995). A genuine pluralist exchange between the orthodox economic mainstream and feminist economics has not occurred (Dobusch & Kapeller, 2012), but there have been some signs of incorporation of gender as a topic into mainstream economics (Eswaran, 2014). In philosophy, similar gendered epistemological and social practices have sedimented over time. Genevieve Lloyd (1979) identified the lasting influence of the idealised masculine rationality constructed in 17th century philosophies that became equated with rationality. The very enterprise of philosophy is predicated on a masculine ideal of systematised reason, detachment from passions and social interdependencies. The epistemic norms of philosophy co-constitute the marginalisation of women and other minorities in philosophy departments and classrooms, conferences and publishing processes (Haslanger, 2008; Hutchison & Jenkins, 2013; Jenkins, 2014). In political science, a narrow definition of the ‘political’ ignores the gendered nature of political life, where men continue to be numerically over-represented in powerful public institutions and sideline the political nature of personal life (Pateman, 1982). Carol Johnson (2014) observes that the sharp public/private distinction underpinning political science poses a barrier to recognising the personal as political and thereby gender as a legitimate topic of mainstream research. A similar set of gendered constructions exists in the field of international relations where state-centric analyses of international system borrow from economics, game theory and rational choice theory (Tickner, 1997). The embedded assumptions about political rationality in mainstream political science and international relations echo economics' Rational Economic Man, and philosophy's Man of Reason (ibid.). In comparison to the above-mentioned disciplines, sociology and history appear to have more readily incorporated feminist theory and gender relations as a topic of the mainstream of these disciplines. Feminist scholarship has been a key element of the broader cultural turn in both social theory (Skeggs, 1997) and history (Canning, 1994; Damousi, 2014). Examinations of the evidence for feminist impact on disciplinary knowledge highlight multiple processes of change. Writing about British sociology, Sylvia Walby (2011) argues that feminist theories and research have been ‘unevenly mainstreamed’. The greatest success has occurred through research on culture and civil society, whereas the study of violence is not fully instituted within the discipline, and the gendering of analysis of the economy has moved outside of the field into business schools. Reflecting on history in Australia, Joy Damousi (2014) observes that feminist scholarship has become increasingly diffused, as subfields within the discipline have become more specialised. The existing literature on the impact of feminist thought on social science and humanities disciplines indicates two important dimensions of change. First, the process of specialisation within a discipline shapes the extent and nature of feminist impact. Reflections on the status of feminist knowledge in a number of disciplines suggest that the formation of disciplinary sub-fields can enable growth and professionalization of feminist scholarship, but also risk marginalisation particularly where feminist scholarship is constructed as a peripheral specialist sub-field (Ferguson, 1994; Skeggs, 2008; Walby, 2011). Second, the ways in which a discipline deals with epistemic difference is also crucial. It appears that practices of disciplinarity that are open rather than closed on matters of epistemological difference, are more viable locations for the production and wide circulation of feminist ideas. For instance, historiographies of sociology consistently depict constantly proliferating schools of thought (e.g. lineages following Simmel's formalism, Durkheim's functionalism, Althusser's structuralism, Foucault's post-structuralism), evoking a sense of internal division due to lack of communication rather than genuine disagreement (Fuller, 1991: 313–314). The epistemic diversity of the sociology discipline could be one of the reasons why it became a relatively more welcoming home for feminist thought compared to more closed disciplines such as philosophy and economics. Overall, the literature on gender and the status of feminist knowledge in different social sciences and humanities signals uneven impacts and different mechanisms of change across disciplinary fields. It appears gender inequalities persist in the production and circulation of knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. However, we know less about the extent and nature of gender inequality in the production and circulation of different forms of disciplinary knowledge. To date, there have been no systematic comparative studies of the impacts of feminism on different social sciences and humanities. As a result, the uneven impact of feminist knowledges in the social sciences and humanities is yet to be confirmed beyond the more discipline-specific and individual sources of evidence cited above. In order to begin developing comparative answers to some key questions we conducted a study of citation patterns, authorship and editorship in six disciplines. Methodology Our quantitative citation analysis focuses on the three dimensions of disciplinary knowledge production and circulation highlighted in the introduction. First, we report on gender in editorship and authorship in different disciplines. Second, the publication of gender-related and feminist research within the authoritative centres of disciplines over time is investigated by focusing on articles produced by highly ranked journals in sociology, history, economics, philosophy and political science 1990–2015. Third, we investigated the patterns of authorship and citations for six specialist feminist journals within each of these disciplinary fields. We compare citations for these journals and a sample of high impact journals a marker of circulation because citations are a quantifiable practice central to the constitution of both scholarly knowledge and academic status. In order to identify centres of disciplinary knowledge in the social sciences and humanities we consulted journal rankings from Thomson and Reuters Journal InCites and Scimago. We selected 10 high-ranking journals in each discipline. Throughout the paper we refer to ‘sociology 10 journals’ or the ‘history 10’ journal sample to describe these subsets. The six groups of 10 journals were chosen on the basis of their high impact factors and other evidence they are recognised as high quality publications in higher education institutions. All journals included were ranked between 1 and 20 on discipline-specific impact factor ranking lists (which are based on citation rates). There was some refinement to the final list of ten journals chosen for each disciplinary sample, which were cross-referenced as highly ranked in the 2010/14 Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) journal rankings. The ERA process, coordinated by the Federal government, involved professional associations ranking journals according to quality. Exclusions to our journal dataset were made if journals were not both high-impact and ERA listed e.g. Economic Geography was not included for economics sample because it was not A* listed for economics in the ERA and Annals of Tourism Research were not included for sociology for the same reason. The full list of 60 journals we analysed as part of this study can be found in the Appendix. It is important to recognise that the ERA was a contested process of journal ranking. It was ultimately abandoned because of objections within the academic community, which focused on ways the ERA journal rankings devalued qualitative differences between articles and assumed uniformity in terms of what is considered valuable research publication (The Conversation, 2011). By using the ERA ranking as a cross-reference for creating the dataset, we do not wish to deny differences between journal articles nor deny the significance and value of those journals not included. Rather, we use it as a means to identify a representative sample of journals that have considerable reach (in terms of their citation rates recorded in WOS) that have been identified as authoritative venues for publishing disciplinary knowledge. Gender & Society was excluded from the sociology ‘10’ sample, on the basis that we wanted to analyse feminist discipline-based journals in a separate sub-sample. Including Gender & Society in the sociology 10 sample would have confounded comparisons (see below). However, because this journal is a high-impact sociology journal we report findings on its editorial staff and rates of gender-related article publishing separately in the results section. Gender composition of editorial staff and article authors In order to answer our first question – to what extent is there gender inequality in knowledge production in different social sciences and humanities disciplines? - we investigated the gender composition of editorial positions associated with the 60 journals by visiting each journal website (accessed January 2017). In addition, the gender of authors was compared and analysed in 1) a sample of the 100 most highly cited papers in each discipline 2001–2010, and 2) a random sample of papers in the same period. Comparison of these two groups allowed us to gauge whether author gender was a factor influencing paper citation rates i.e. if women are less likely to be authors of papers in highly cited papers compared to a randomly chosen sample of papers. To minimise the effects of time on citation rates, we selected a time-period that excluded most recent articles that would not be cited well. The 2001–2010 time-period is slightly skewed to earlier published articles (60–68% of papers in this sub-sample were published between 2001 and 2005), however this effect is the same for all disciplines. It should be noted that this count relies on an imperfect measure of gender identity, which excludes non-binary identities. Gender was coded in binary M/W, based upon the gender commonly associated with the person's first name. Where the first name of the editorial group member or author was ambiguous, the university profile webpage of the academic was consulted, and a gender was identified on the basis of the personal pronoun used in the person's career and research statement. In the few instances this was not possible, we omitted the person from the count. Managing editors and editorial assistants were not included in the count of academic editors reported. We found that not all journals listed their managing editor on the journal website. Among those that do, the majority of people holding these roles were women (38/47 managing editors on 44 journals). Differences in the number of women and men editors for the 10 highest ranked journals within each discipline were tested via t-test using Sigmaplot (Ver.11). Numbers of editors within each journal were converted to percentage to normalise for differences in total editors between journals. Data was tested for normality via the Shapiro-Wilk test. Permanova (Primer-E Ver. 6) was used to test for differences in the number of women editors between disciplines. Percentage number of women editors was used to calculate a resemblance matrix (Euclidean distance) and Permdisp used to test for homogeneity of dispersals. Where significant differences were present pair-wise tests were performed to determine which disciplines where different from each other. Permanova was also used to test for significant differences in the presence of women authors (both first and all) between the top 100 cited articles and a random selection of 100 hundred articles for each discipline, as well as between disciplines, between 2001 and 2010. Due to the size of the data (n = 1200) tests were performed for individual disciplines. For all analysis, significant differences between factors was assumed when there was a >95% chance that there was a difference between factors/groups tests (i.e. a p-value <0.05). Gender-related research within disciplinary centres In order to answer the question - To what extent is feminist and gender-related research produced within disciplinary centres? - we measured the proportions of journal articles published that address gender relations in some way. This was measured as the proportion of articles published each year that addresses the topic of women, gender and/or feminism in the core disciplinary journals. A Web of Science (WOS) database search was conducted for the number of articles published between 1990 and 2015 in the 60 journal set that are recorded in the WOS database as having ‘gender’ OR ‘women’ OR ‘feminis*’ (referred to herein as addressing gender) listed as a topic, i.e. one or more of these terms was contained in the title, abstract or keywords. This search was used as a way to gauge the extent to which gender relations (the central object of feminist thought) were identified as an object of study in a discipline. We also investigated the proportion of these articles that explicitly addressed feminis* (addressed feminism). We performed linear regression analysis to test for trends over time in the mean number of papers that addressed gender and feminism. Initial visual examination of the data suggested if trends were present they were likely best fit with a linear model. Shapiro-Wilk test was used to test for normality of data; where data was non-normally distributed it was transformed (ln[x + 1]). In one instance (gender - philosophy) data remained non-normally distributed in which case a p-value of 0.01 was used to accept significance in order to reduce the chance of a type-1 error (i.e. suggesting there is a trend over time when there is not). We tested for differences between disciplines for the proportion of articles addressing gender and feminism using Permanova. For this data we calculated the mean proportion of articles between 2000 and 2015. This was done because between 1990 and 2000 there was an increase in the proportion of articles published that addressed gender/feminism for some disciplines; between 2000 and 2010 there did not appear to be any increase/decrease over time across all disciplines. Data for gender was square root transformed to increase the homogeneity of dispersions to >0.05. Transformations did not increase the homogeneity of dispersions for data on articles addressing feminism in which case a p-value of 0.01 was used to test significance to reduce the chance of a type-1 error. Where significant differences were present, pair-wise tests were performed to determine which disciplines where different from each other. Permanova was also used to test for significant differences in the presence of articles addressing gender between the top 100 cited articles and a random selection of 100 hundred articles for each discipline, between 2001 and 2010. Specialist feminist journals within disciplines In order to answer the question - how do discipline-specific feminist publications circulate within and/or outside disciplinary centres? - citation patterns associated with articles published in feminist journals located within the six disciplines were analysed. The disciplines of citing articles were compared for the following journals: Feminist Economics (economics), Women's History Review (history), International Feminist Journal of Politics (international relations), Hypatia (philosophy), Politics & Gender (political science), and Gender & Society (sociology). The discipline-based feminist journals sampled in this study are ranked by the WOS as contributing to the interdisciplinary field of women's studies and often, but not always recognised as contributing to a central discipline. The annual 2016 WOS journal rankings (Table 1) are based upon the journal impact factor, which is based upon the previous year of citation rates. The sociology journal Gender & Society ranks highly in the discipline (9/142) and as number one in the WOS women's studies ranking. Feminist Economics, International Feminist Journal of Politics, and Politics & Gender all rank within the top 30 to 50% of journals in their disciplinary fields. WOS does not provide journal rankings for philosophy (only ethics). Hypatia is registered in the WOS database as women's studies, and Women's History Review does not register at all in WOS journal rankings. Table 1. Specialist feminist journals and their WOS discipline rankings. Journal Association Publisher 2016 WOS journal rank Feminist Economics (est. 1995) International Association for Feminist Economics (USA) Taylor & Francis (UK) 123/345 Economics 16/40 Women's Studies Women's History Review (est. 1992), – Taylor & Francis (UK) No ranking in History International Feminist Journal of Politics (est. 1999) Feminist Theory and Gender Studies section of the International Studies Association (USA) Taylor & Francis (UK) 67/163 Political science 19/40 Women's Studies Hypatia (est. 1986) Society for Women in Philosophy (USA) Wiley Blackwell (USA) No WOS Philosophy rankings available. 28/40 Women's Studies Politics & Gender (est. 2005) Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association (USA) Cambridge University Press (UK) 64/163 Political Science 17/40 Women's Studies Gender & Society (est. 1987) Sociologists for Women in Society (USA) Sage (USA) 9/142 Sociology 1/40 Women's Studies In order to measure the extent of discipline-based citation in these journals, the proportion of citations for all articles published in these journals that are designated as belonging to the core discipline (according to WOS) were calculated. We also compared measures of disciplinarity of the citations of articles published in discipline-based feminist journals with the citations for articles published in the corresponding 10 disciplinary journals. This was to enable a comparison of disciplinarity between a feminist sub-field and its mainstream discipline, for example, between feminist economics and economics. Citations are a count of articles recorded in the WOS database. It was not possible to include books or other types of citations (e.g. policy reports). Self-citations were not included. Citations were coded in binary form as either being with the core discipline or not. Citations that are coded as both the discipline (e.g. economics) and one or more other fields (e.g. mathematical methods) in the WOS database were counted as being located within the core discipline. If an article published in Feminist Economics is cited by another article from that journal it counts as a citation from within economics. Permanova (Primer-E Ver. 6) was used to test for differences in inter/disciplinarity of citation practices between disciplines. Average percentage number of relevant discipline citations was used to calculate a resemblance matrix (Euclidean distance). Permdisp was used to test for homogeneity of dispersals. Where significant differences were present pair-wise tests were performed to determine which disciplines where different from each other. Results High-ranked journals and the gendered production of disciplinary knowledge There are a significantly higher numbers of men editors than women editors for all journals in all six disciplines (Fig. 1, Appendix B). Women are under-represented to varying degrees in each of the disciplines sampled ranging from comprising an average of 19.7% of editors in economics to 39.2%. Sociology, history, and political science had a significantly higher proportion of women editors than economics and philosophy (Fig. 1, Appendix B). Men were the majority of Editors-in-Chief (EC) of the journals sampled. Six of ten sociology journals sampled had one man or only men ECs, 8/10 in political science, 8/10 in international relations, 8/10 in economics, 7/8 in philosophy (two journals do not name ECs). The exception was history where 4/10 ECs were men only. Fig. 1 Download high-res image (89KB)Download full-size image Fig. 1. Average proportion of women and men editors per discipline in the 10 disciplinary journals as of January 2017. Error bars are standard error. The majority of publishing houses (commercial, university press and independent) and editors associated with the 60 journals we analysed are located in the USA or Europe (see Appendix B). Editorial boards are also mostly made up of academic staff from these regions. Most editors in the sample are located in American universities, followed by universities in the United Kingdom. First authors of articles in all disciplines were overwhelming men (Fig. 2). Women authors were present on less than half of all articles published, with the exception of sociology. There was no significant difference in the presence of women authors for articles in the top 100 most cited within a discipline or those selected at random authorship (Appendix B – Table 4). Discipline did have a significant influence (P < 0.01) on the proportion of women authors and first authors when tested for the random sample (Appendix B – Table 2). Sociology, history, and international relations had significantly (P < 0.05) higher presence of women first authors than economics and philosophy (Appendix B – Table 5). Sociology also had a significantly higher presence of women first authors than political science. For the presence of any women authors (any position of authorship on an article) sociology had a significantly higher presence of women authors than all other disciplines, while philosophy had a significantly lower proportion of women authors than all other disciplines (Appendix B – Table 6). Fig. 2 Download high-res image (180KB)Download full-size image Fig. 2. Proportion of articles with women present as a first author (left) or as any author (right) in the top 100 cited articles and a random selection of 100 articles within each discipline, 2001–2010. Gender-related research within disciplinary centres There are marked differences between disciplines with regard to the volume of gender-related research produced. Sociology articles that address gender comprised 21% of the 6568 articles that have been published in the 10 sociology journals between 1990 and 2015. Articles in the Sociology journals sample exclude the high impact, gender-focused journal Gender & Society. Even without this journal in the sample, the 10 sociology journals are much more likely to address gender and/or feminism compared to the other disciplines sampled (Fig. 3). Fig. 3 Download high-res image (179KB)Download full-size image Fig. 3. Mean proportion of articles addressing gender (top) and feminism (bottom) for each discipline within the top 10 journals, 2000–2015. Error bars are standard error. Note the differences between the Y-axes in these two graphs. The proportion of articles that address gender in the 10 Sociology journals, 21.3%, is significantly higher (P < 0.001) than all other disciplines (Fig. 3, Appendix B – Table 7). Inversely, the 10 Philosophy journals had a significantly lower (P < 0.001) proportion of articles, 0.5%, that address gender than all other disciplines. History had a significantly higher (P < 0.001) proportion of articles addressing gender than all disciplines except sociology, while international relations and political science were significantly higher (P < 0.05) than economics and philosophy. The proportion of articles explicitly addressing feminism was low in all disciplines; <1% (Fig. 3). There was a significant difference in the mean proportion of articles that address feminism (Appendix B – Table 2, Table 8). In international relations and sociology journals, this was significantly higher than history, economics, and philosophy. Political science was significantly higher than economics. When rounded to the closest 0.1% economics on average across 2001 to 2015 had 0% of articles that address feminism. Looking at trends in gender-related articles published over time there was little to no increase in articles addressing gender (includes articles also addressing feminism) between 1990 and 2015 (Fig. 4, Appendix B – Table 9). There was a small but significant (P < 0.05) increase in articles addressing gender over time in international relations and political science. Both had significant trends of an increase from <1% in 1990 to ~3% in 2015. There was no significant trend over time in other disciplines. There was also a significant increase (P < 0.05) in articles addressing feminism in international relations, an increase from <1% to 2% (Appendix B – Fig. 1, Table 9). There was no significant difference in articles addressing gender between the top 100 cited articles and a random selection within each discipline (Appendix B – Table 10). Fig. 4 Download high-res image (303KB)Download full-size image Fig. 4. Time series of the proportion of articles addressing gender for each discipline, 1990–2015. Where a significant trend was present linear regression line has been included. Error bars are standard error. Feminist publishing: Circulation within and beyond disciplines Some disciplines are characterised by a high level of intra-discipline citation. For example, papers within the discipline cite papers mainly from the discipline are in turn cited by further papers within the discipline. Levels of disciplinary citation were identified by measuring the proportion of citations that are coded as being from the relevant discipline in WOS. The sociology 10 journals had a significantly lower (P < 0.05) average proportion of discipline-specific (i.e. sociology) citations, 22.7%, (i.e. citation from articles in sociology journals) compared to all other disciplines (Fig. 5, Appendix B – Table 2, Table 11). History and international relations both were significantly lower (P < 0.05) than economics and philosophy, while political science was only significantly lower (P < 0.05) than philosophy. Philosophy had the highest proportion of discipline-specific citations at 72.7%. Fig. 5 Download high-res image (107KB)Download full-size image Fig. 5. Mean proportion of citations from within disciplines for each discipline, comparing the 10 discipline journals with specialist feminist journals, 2001–2010. The specialist feminist journals had a similar number of discipline-specific citations as the 10 journals for sociology, history and political science (Fig. 5). In international relations, economics and philosophy, feminist journals had markedly less discipline specific citations than their respective discipline samples of 10 journals, ranging from 21.7% for Feminist Economics to 27.0% for International Feminist Journal of Politics. Ten per cent of the discipline-specific citations for Gender & Society were from articles published in the discipline 10 sociology journals. Eight per cent of discipline-specific citations for Gender & Politics and International Feminist Journal of Politics were from the discipline 10 journals. For Hypatia, 3% of discipline citations were from the philosophy 10 journals, and <1% of citations for Women's History Review and Feminist Economics articles were from the discipline 10 journals. Discussion The persistence of gender inequality in the social sciences and humanities The results of this study confirm the ongoing under-representation of women in journal publishing, although the extent of this inequality varies across disciplines. Men are still the majority of Editors-in-Chief on prestigious journals, with the exception of history, and there is no gender parity in editorial roles in any discipline. The starkest gender inequalities appear in philosophy and economics. In these disciplines, we found under-representation of women in editorial roles and as authors, alongside tiny rates of gender-related and barely any explicitly feminist research published in highly ranked journals in the disciplinary mainstream. Only in sociology do women appear as >50% of authors in the discipline 10 sample, raising the question – why are they not yet half of editors of these journals? It should be noted again that we chose not to include Gender & Society within the sociology ‘10’, in part as this gender specific journal is an outlier among other prestigious sociology journals (83% of its editors are women). The findings of this study support others that have shown women's scholarship is under-represented in highly ranked social science and humanities journals. For instance, Sally Haslanger (2008) has shown that articles by women philosophers tend to be a small minority in philosophy journals. A similar pattern has been found for political science and international relations journals (Østby et al., 2013; Teele & Thelen, 2017). This is a reminder that the androcentrism of political science and international relations is also a continuing issue (Johnson, 2014; Sawer, 2004). The under-representation of women as first authors in all disciplines warrants further investigation. It conforms to patterns found in other research on co-authorship in the humanities and social sciences (Macfarlane, 2017). In most social science disciplines, the first author position is important in terms of credit and status because it designates the researcher who made the major contribution to the article and led the writing (BSA, 2001). However in economics, alphabetical listing of authors is more common (Efthyvoulou, 2008). The under-representation of women in editorial roles and as authors, in some respects reflects the make-up of the academic workforces in these disciplines. For instance, the American Economics Association Committee surveys since 1973 find ‘at every level of the academic hierarchy, from entering PhD student to full professor, women have been and remain a minority’ (Lundberg, 2017). In 2017, PhD graduates were 32.9% women, 28.8% of assistant professors, 23.0% of tenured associate professors and 13.9% of full professors (ibid.: 12). A similar pattern has been found for philosophy in the US (Paxton et al., 2012). It is also important to recognise that the overwhelming majority of authors and editors studied are located in the US, UK and to a lesser extent, other parts of Europe (see Appendix B). The global inequality between North and South in knowledge production and circulation is another defining feature of gender research in the social sciences and humanities (Connell, 2015). Our study shows that men in wealthy knowledge institutions of the global North predominate in centres of disciplinary authority. Interrogating the relationship between gender, discipline formations, and neocolonial power in knowledge production and circulation would be a fruitful line of future research. Uneven impact of feminist research in the social sciences and humanities Our study confirms that gender research in sociology is much more central to the discipline compared to other social sciences and humanities fields. One on hand, this is not surprising. As Alway (1995, p. 211) observes, sociology would seem to be a ‘congenial disciplinary home’ for feminist scholarship because of its orientation to improving social life and solving social problems, as well as its suspicion of ‘naturalistic explanations’ for social phenomena. On the other hand, feminist sociologists writing in the 1990s presented a picture of mixed and uneven success (Alway, 1995; Stacey & Thorne, 1985). Overall, our findings are consistent with reviews that have mapped a rise of gender as a topic of empirical and theoretical investigation in sociology from the 1980s onwards (Roth & Dashper, 2016; Walby, 2011). A core aim of feminist knowledge – to identify the centrality of gender relations to social life – has profoundly impacted sociology. That over one fifth of the research published in high ranked sociology journals since 1990 is gender-related, highlights that researching and theorising gender relations is central to this field. No other disciplinary field included in this study published gender-related research at this scale. Trends in publishing of gender-related and feminist research within disciplinary centres of international relations and economics signals modest change over time, where the publication of gender research in prominent journals has shown modest rates of increase since the 1990s. This shows that feminist scholars are having notable, but limited success transcending well-guarded epistemic boundaries of the mainstream of international relations (Steans, 2003), economics (Ferber & Brün, 2011), and philosophy (Hutchison & Jenkins, 2013). Importantly, breaking through to the centres of power within discipline mainstreams is not the only strategy for producing and disseminating feminist knowledge. A major part of the arrival of feminist academics in universities and other research organisations has involved the production of new vehicles for producing and circulating feminist knowledge (Sawer & Curtin, 2016). Many of the women's studies and gender studies centres and institutes that have been created are interdisciplinary, as are many of the leading specialist journals (such as Feminist Studies, Feminist Theory, and Australian Feminist Studies). Other examples have a clear disciplinary focus e.g. Feminist Economics and Hypatia. These specialist journals are products of collective organising among feminist intellectuals within social science and humanities disciplines. They are connected to international feminist academic networks and/or professional associations, for instance the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) created Feminist Economics, the Society for Women in Philosophy created Hypatia, Sociologists for Women in Society created Gender & Society, and the Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association created Politics & Gender. These feminist journals are important avenues for feminist knowledge production within (and beyond) their ‘home’ disciplines. The arrival of feminist specialist journals within disciplines represents the success of collective efforts to actively produce new lines of scholarly research, rather than seek entry into the ‘top’ discipline journals. In the first instance, we have found that all of these journals have had impressive success. Gender & Society stands out as a high-impact feminist journal that attracts citation at a comparable to the discipline 10 samples we studied. While the other feminist journals we looked at do not travel as far, they have healthy citation impacts, they publish high quality and innovative work and they both support and reflect productive and collegial communities of scholars. There is further research needed to investigate the nature of knowledge about gender relations being produced in these disciplines. In this large N study, we were unable to undertake content analysis of the papers addressing gender. We therefore have not been able to identify how central gender is as a category of analysis in these articles, nor have we been able to identify the extent to which the knowledge is produced as explicitly feminist, rather than non-feminist, or perhaps anti-feminist. Further comparative studies using content analysis may assist in identifying the degrees of conceptual transformation visible in these publications, and/or the normative aspects of gender research across disciplines. Inter/disciplinarity mediates the circulation of feminist knowledge We investigated the practice of disciplinarity and inter-disciplinarity in citations in order to document how feminist knowledge circulates, compared to knowledge produced in mainstream discipline centres. Feminist and gender-related scholarship tends to be interdisciplinary (Allen & Kitch, 1998; Peterson, 1993). Our findings suggest interdisciplinarity in citations for feminist scholarship takes on different meanings when considered in relation to specific disciplinary citation norms. Here, we argue the citation patterns highlight practices that might maintain disciplinary boundaries and the constitutive gender inequalities that some disciplines display. On the other hand, and perhaps most importantly, we observe that disciplines with relatively open disciplinary boundaries have been the most fertile ground for gender-related knowledge production and circulation. Our measure of interdisciplinarity in citations is assumed to be one indication of the degree to which the knowledge produced by feminist sub-fields travels beyond discipline boundaries, versus the discipline mainstream. Our measure focuses on knowledge circulation. A low proportion of citations from within the discipline signifies a higher degree of interdisciplinarity in the circulation of disciplinary knowledge. This common measure of disciplinarity/interdisciplinarity has some limitations due to our use of pre-given WOS Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) journal categories, rather than hand-coding (see Wagner et al., 2011). The ISI categories are allocated to journals, not individual articles. Journals are often given more than one code (e.g. philosophy AND ethics). Because of this, we could not generate adequate data about the variance within disciplinary or interdisciplinary citations. However, the simple measure of whether or not citations are coded with one of the six established disciplines of interest (economics, history, international relations, philosophy, political science, sociology) is meaningful for our comparative research question - how does feminist knowledge circulate within and beyond disciplines? The citation data (Fig. 5) conveys the importance of congruence between the degree of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity in feminist scholarship and the relevant discipline mainstream. Sociology and history show congruence in the degree of interdisciplinarity, evidenced in citation patterns. However, the relative interdisciplinarity of the entire field of sociology compared to the other disciplines in this study is evident in both the citations of sociology 10 journal publications and the Gender & Society journal. The shared norm of interdisciplinary reading and citation practices in sociology appears to be an important element in the relative success of feminist sociology. There is also relative congruence between the higher degree of disciplinary citations for specialist feminist journals in history and political science with discipline mainstream journals. We might interpret this as a signal that further integration of feminist knowledge into the mainstream is possible in these disciplines. However, the sociology example highlights that a stronger norm of interdisciplinarity may be essential for a more significant transformation of the history and political science disciplines in the future. The cases of Gender & Politics and International Feminist Journal of Politics potentially represent differences between feminist political science and feminist international relations in terms of practices of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity in these subfields. There was no significant difference between the disciplinarity of citations for the political science 10 and international relations discipline 10 samples. However, Gender & Politics citations were similar to the disciplinary norm in political science, and more disciplinary than the international relations journal - International Feminist Journal of Politics. The finding suggests that feminist international relations may share stronger barriers to recognition within the international relations discipline centre than feminist political science, making it similar to economics and philosophy. Future content analysis based research will help identify the differences and commonalities between these two cognate fields. Meanwhile, the disciplines where citation practices are in stark contrast illustrate a key mechanism of gendered power in discipline boundary formation. The incongruence between citations of papers published in Hypatia and Feminist Economics versus mainstream journals in philosophy and economics highlights how disciplinary borders are maintained. The strongly disciplinary citation patterns in the philosophy 10 and economics 10 samples show that the centre of these disciplines is remarkably closed, compared to other disciplines of political science, international relations, sociology and even history. In this context, the relatively higher levels of interdisciplinary citations for feminist philosophy and economics correspond with a low citation rate in ‘home’ disciplines, and thus would seem to reflect a broad disinterest in feminist work among scholars in the mainstream of these fields. However it is important to note that Feminist Economics has had greater success in attracting audiences in the field of heterodox economics, compared to its low impact in the mainstream (Ferber & Brün, 2011; Lee, 2008). This suggests that more detailed comparative analyses of the circulation of feminist disciplinary knowledge could provide insight into the kinds of sub-fields that are more receptive to feminist ideas. A strong disciplinary readership is an important marker of success and impact for many fields of knowledge, including feminist knowledges. Disciplines can only be transformed if feminist scholarship is taken up and taken seriously in the centre of disciplines. However, interdisciplinary circulation, characteristic of feminist philosophy and economics, should also be recognised as a powerful and generative form of knowledge production that contributes immensely to feminist scholarship. Clearly, scholars in other fields find feminist economics and philosophy relevant and useful to their endeavours; without such interdisciplinarity in feminist scholarship we would lose analytic acuity and depth. Thus feminist philosophy and feminist economics can be understood as fields marked by external impact and a tradition of resistance to the boundary work of disciplinarity. Conclusion This study investigated journal publication and citation as practices that shape the production and track the impact of feminist knowledges. Comparing six disciplines, we focused on three issues: 1) the gender profile of journal editors and authors; 2) rates of feminist and gender-related publication within prestigious disciplinary journals; and 3) citation patterns of articles published in discipline-specific feminist journals. We found that gender inequality persists in the knowledge production process, most starkly in philosophy and economics. The circulation of feminist ideas and research on gender relations is strong in fields of sociology and history, less so in political science and international relations where publication of gender and feminist papers are modest, and minimal in economics and philosophy. The study suggests that practices of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity are related to gender inequalities in knowledge production and circulation across different social sciences and humanities disciplines. The uneven impact of feminist knowledge in these disciplines can therefore be linked to disciplinary citation practices. While citation patterns that maintain strong disciplinary borders tend to support gender inequality in publication and the marginalisation of feminist knowledge, this is mediated by levels of congruence in disciplinary/interdisciplinary citation between feminist and mainstream scholarship. In the cases of history and sociology, mainstream and feminist scholarship have congruent citation practices, although history is marked by a norm of disciplinary citation, and sociology by relative interdisciplinarity. The influence of feminist scholarship on both these disciplines has been strong, and analyses of gender are now central to their concerns. In the cases of economics and philosophy, there is marked incongruence or contrast between the highly bounded disciplinarity of the mainstream disciplines and the interdisciplinarity of feminist economics and feminist philosophy. Here the interdisciplinarity of feminist knowledge reflects continued marginalisation from the mainstream. The cases of political science and international relations are more mixed. The citation patterns of these disciplines is not as ‘closed’ as it is in economics and philosophy. However, there appears to be greater incongruence between interdisciplinary feminist international relations and the international relations mainstream, as compared to political science. Any full explanation of the uneven impact of feminist knowledge on the social sciences and humanities must be multi-dimensional, engaging with both epistemological and institutional practices. Disciplines and their constitution of different forms of knowledge as authoritative and valuable are central to these practices. Disciplines produce particular economies of knowledge where research outputs are produced and circulated. Research by feminist scholars has made clear that epistemological pluralism within disciplines has been essential to feminist knowledge gaining traction and influence. In this article we have built on this insight by highlighting the way practices of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity operate in different disciplines. We have also confirmed the importance and value of discipline-specific feminist journals as venues for feminist scholarship. These venues have enabled feminist work to reach disciplinary centres to varying extents, but have fostered wide circulation in the broader interdisciplinary milieu of gender research. Future studies focused on comparing and interpreting the impact of these publications beyond disciplinary borders would strengthen our understanding of the impact of feminist disciplinary knowledge. As we have noted, the methodology used in this study has limitations. Perhaps most importantly, the number of articles in the sample precluded qualitative analysis of their content. Therefore we were unable to evaluate the centrality of gender or feminism to the articles identified in the gender-related sample. A content or discourse analysis of the articles would have provided much richer data, but would have been too time intensive for this initial comparative study. Future research combining quantitative citation analysis with content analysis, either focused on one discipline or comparing disciplines, would add valuable depth to our findings. Funding statement This project was funded by the Australian Research Council, DP150104449. Acknowledgements The authors thank their colleagues on this project, Fiona Jenkins, Claire Donovan, Marian Sawer, Monica Costa, and Karen Downing. Appendix A. Table 1. The 10 journals used for economics. Economics journal Association/Department Publisher Journal of Economic Literature (est 1963) American Economic Association (USA) American Economic Association (USA) Quarterly Journal of Economics (est 1886) Department of Economics at Harvard University (USA) Oxford University Press (UK) Journal of Finance (est 1946) American Finance Association (USA) Wiley Blackwell (USA) Journal of Economic Perspectives (est 1987) American Economic Association (USA) American Economic Association (USA) Review of Economic Studies (est 1933) The Review of Economic Studies Ltd. (USA, UK) Oxford University Press (UK) Econometrica (est 1933) Econometric Society (USA) Wiley Blackwell (USA) American Economic Review (est 1911) American Economic Association (USA) American Economic Association (USA) Journal of Political Economy (est 1892) – University of Chicago Press (USA) Journal of Financial Economics (est 1974) – Elsevier (NL) Journal of Accounting & Economics (est 1979) – Elsevier (NL) Table 2. The 10 journals used for history. History journal Association/Department Publisher American Historical Review (est 1895) American Historical Association (USA) Oxford University Press (UK) Economic History Review (est 1927) Economic History Society (UK) Wiley Blackwell (USA) Journal of African History (est 1960) – Cambridge University Press (UK) History & Theory (est 1960) – Wiley Blackwell (USA) Environment & History (est 1995) – White Horse Press (UK) Comparative Studies in Society & History (est 1958) Society for Comparative Study of Society & History (UK) Cambridge University Press (UK) Journal of the History of Economic Thought (est 1980) – Cambridge University Press (UK) Past & Present (est 1952) Past and Present Society (UK) Oxford University Press (UK) Law & History Review (est 1983) – Cambridge University Press (UK) History Workshop Journal (est 1976) – Oxford University Press (UK) Table 3. The 10 journals used for political science. Political Science journal Association/Department Publisher American Journal of Political Science (est 1956) Midwest Political Science Association (USA) Wiley Blackwell (USA) Political Analysis (est 1990) – Oxford University Press (UK) Annual Review of Political Science (est 1998) – Annual Reviews (USA) American Political Science Review (est 1906) American Political Science Association (USA) Cambridge University Press (UK) Governance (est 1995) Structure & Organization of Government Committee, International Political Science Association (USA) Wiley Blackwell (USA) British Journal of Political Science (est 1971) – Cambridge University Press (UK) Comparative Political Studies (est 1968) – Sage (USA) European Journal of Political Research (est 1973) European Consortium for Political Research (EU) Wiley Blackwell (USA) Review of International Political Economy (est 1994) – Taylor and Francis (UK) Journal of Politics (est 1939) Southern Political Science Association (USA) University of Chicago Press (USA) Table 4. The 10 journals used for international relations. International relations journal Association/Department Publisher International Security (est 1976) Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University (USA) MIT Press (USA) International Organization (est 1947) International Organization Foundation (USA) Cambridge University Press (UK) World Politics (est 1948) Princeton Institute for International and Regional Affairs Cambridge University Press (UK) European Journal of International Relations (from 1988) European Standing Group on International Relations of the European Consortium for Political Research (EU) Sage (USA) International Affairs (est 1922) Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs (UK) Oxford University Press (UK) Security Dialogue (est 1970) Peace Research Institute Oslo (NO) Sage (USA) Journal of Peace Research (est 1964) Peace Research Institute Oslo (NO) Sage (USA) International Studies Quarterly (est 1959) International Studies Association (USA) Wiley Blackwell (USA) Journal of Common Market Studies (est 1962) University Association for Contemporary European Studies (EU) Wiley Blackwell (USA) Journal of Conflict Resolution (est 1957) Peace Science Society (USA) Sage (USA) Table 5. The 10 journals used for philosophy. Philosophy journal Association/Department Publisher Philosophical Review (est 1892) Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University (USA) Duke University Press (USA) Noûs (est 1967) – Wiley Blackwell (USA) Journal of Philosophy (est 1904) Philosophy Department at Columbia University Philosophy Documentation Center (USA) Ethics (est 1890) – University of Chicago Press (USA) Australasian Journal of Philosophy (est 1923) Australasian Association of Philosophy (AU/NZ) Taylor and Francis (UK) Mind (est 1876) Mind Association (UK) Oxford University Press (UK) Philosophers Imprint (est 2001) – Michigan Publishing (USA) Mind & Language (est 1986) – Wiley Blackwell (USA) Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (est 1920) School of Philosophy, University of Southern California (USA) Wiley Blackwell (USA) Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (est 1940) International Phenomenological Society (USA) Wiley BlackwelI (USA) Table 6. The 10 journals used for sociology. Sociology journal Association/Department Publisher Annual Review of Sociology (est 1975) – Annual Reviews (USA) American Sociological Review (est 1936) American Sociological Association (USA) Sage (USA) Sociological Methods & Research (est 1972) – Sage (USA) Social Networks (est 1979) – Elsevier (NL) Work & Occupations (est 1974) – Sage (USA) American Journal of Sociology (est 1895) – Wiley Blackwell (USA) Rural Sociology (est 1936) Rural Sociological Society (USA) Cambridge University Press (UK) British Journal of Sociology (est 1950) London School of Economics (UK) Wiley Blackwell (USA) Work, Employment & Society (est 1987) British Sociological Association (UK) Sage (USA) Sociology of Education (est 1963) American Sociological Association (USA) Sage (USA) Fig. 1 Download high-res image (92KB)Download full-size image Fig. 1. Count of the regions of origin of first author institutions from the top 100 cited articles and a randomly selected 100 articles in each discipline, 2001–2010. Appendix B. Detailed results of all statistical analysis (as per subheading in results section) High-ranked journals and the gendered production of disciplinary knowledge Table 1. t-test results testing differences between the proportion of women and men editors within the top 10 journals of each distance. N Mean (%) SD (%) SE (%) t df p Sociology Women 10 38.311 15.133 4.786 −3.454 18 0.003 Men 10 61.89 15.133 4.786 History Women 10 38.873 10.660 3.371 −4.668 18 <0.001 Men 10 61.128 10.660 3.371 Political Science Women 10 37.243 12.777 4.040 −4.465 18 <0.001 Men 10 62.757 12.777 4.040 International Relations Women 10 30.530 12.225 3.866 −7.123 18 <0.001 Men 10 69.470 12.225 3.866 Economics Women 10 21.509 15.488 4.898 −8.227 18 <0.001 Men 10 78.491 15.488 4.898 Philosophy Women 10 21.932 8.348 2.640 −15.037 18 <0.001 Men 10 78.068 8.348 2.640 Table 2. Results for the PERMANOVA testing differences between disciplines for A) the proportion of women editors in the 10 journals, B) Women first authors, C) Presence of women authors, D) proportion of articles addressing gender and E) feminism, and F) disciplinary specific citations. *Significance assumed when P < 0.01 due to Perdisp <0.05. Pseudo-F df P Perms A) Women editors 4.0536 5 0.006 998 B) Women first authors 5.6856 5 0.001 120 C) Presence of women authors 9.9219 5 0.001 147 D) Articles addressing gender 198.86 5 0.001 999 E) Articles addressing feminism 13.335 5 0.001* 999 F) Disciplinary citations 15.36 5 0.001 999 Table 3. Results (P values) of Permanova pair-wise test comparing differences in the percentage of Women editors between disciplines. Significant differences in bold. Sociology History Political Science International Relations Economics Philosophy Sociology History 0.682 Political Science 0.879 0.785 International Relations 0.208 0.136 0.269 Economics 0.021 0.003 0.024 0.176 Philosophy 0.018 0.006 0.005 0.066 0.390 Table 4. Permanova results testing differences in women authorship (as first author and as any author) between the Top 100 cited articles and randomly selected 100 articles between 2001 and 2010. Individual test were performed for each discipline due to the size of the data set. Pseudo-F df P Unique Perms Presence of women first authors Sociology 1.0948 1 0.295 16 History 0.0429 1 0.876 13 Political Science 0.53804 1 0.467 12 Industrial Relation 1.4476 1 0.229 11 Economics 0.0424 1 0.834 11 Philosophy 1.0654 1 0.306 11 Presence of women authors (all) Sociology 1.2754 1 0.273 12 History 0.2067 1 0.640 12 Political Science 0.2104 1 0.619 11 Industrial Relation 0.0910 1 0.751 12 Economics 0.6355 1 0.526 14 Philosophy 1.4912 1 0.223 11 Table 5. Results (P values) of Permanova pair-wise test comparing differences in the presence of women first authors between disciplines for 100 randomly chosen articles between 2001 and 2010. Significant differences in bold. Sociology History Political Science International Relations Economics Philosophy Sociology History 0.199 Political Science 0.009 0.184 International Relations 0.07 0.628 0.395 Economics 0.002 0.009 0.183 0.027 Philosophy 0.001 0.003 0.082 0.008 0.664 Table 6. Results (P values) of Permanova pair-wise test comparing differences in the presence of women authors (all) between disciplines for 100 randomly chosen articles between 2001 and 2010. Significant differences in bold. Sociology History Political Science International Relations Economics Philosophy Sociology History 0.001 Political Science 0.003 0.622 International Relations 0.004 0.755 0.888 Economics 0.001 0.353 0.164 0.219 Philosophy 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.021 Gender-related research within disciplinary centres Table 7. Results (P values) of Permanova pair-wise test comparing differences in the mean annual proportion of articles addressing gender between disciplines, 2000–2015. Sociology History Political Science International Relations Economics Philosophy Sociology History 0.001 Political Science 0.001 0.001 International Relations 0.001 0.001 0.89 Economics 0.001 0.001 0.008 0.016 Philosophy 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 Table 8. Results (P values) of Permanova pair-wise test comparing differences in the mean annual proportion of articles addressing feminism between disciplines 2000–2015. Significant difference only assumed when P < 0.01 due to Perdisp results <0.05. Sociology History Political Science International Relations Economics Philosophy Sociology History 0.003 Political Science 0.055 0.112 International Relations 0.555 0.003 0.018 Economics 0.001 0.019 0.001 0.001 Philosophy 0.001 0.641 0.019 0.001 0.023 Table 9. Results for multiple regression analysis of proportion of articles addressing gender and feminism. Only disciplines with a statistically significant (P < 0.05) trend have been included. Model R2 F p Addressing gender International Relations Articles = −1012.237 + (0.000414 ∗ year) s.e. 189.627 0.0000773 0.544 28.648 <0.001 Economics Articles = −516.422 + (0.000211 ∗ year) s.e. 144.978 0.0000591 0.348 12.785 0.002 Addressing feminism International Relations Ln (Articles + 1) = −224.213 + (0.0000917 ∗ year) s.e. 57.5333 0.0000235 0.363 15.266 <0.001 Fig. 1 Download high-res image (283KB)Download full-size image Fig. 1. Time-series of the proportion of articles addressing feminism for each discipline, 1990–2015. Where a significant trend was present linear regression line has been included. Error bars are standard error. Table 10. Permanova results testing differences in articles addressing gender between the Top 100 cited articles and randomly selected 100 articles between 2001 and 2010. Individual test were performed for each discipline due to the size of the data set. The number of articles addressing gender was very small, as was the difference between the top 100 and the random samples. Due to this, the number of unique permutations is small, and results should be interpreted conservatively. nt = not tested. Pseudo-F df P Unique Perms Sociology 0.0424 1 0.835 10 History nt – – – Political Science 0.2034 1 0.652 3 Industrial Relation 4.4204e-16 1 1.000 5 Economics 0.2033 1 0.653 3 Philosophy nt – – – Feminist publishing: Circulation within and beyond disciplines Table 11. Results (P values) of Permanova pair-wise test comparing differences between disciplines in the mean annual citations from within each respective group of 10 discipline journals disciplines. Sociology History Political Science International Relations Economics Philosophy Sociology History 0.014 Political Science 0.001 0.065 International Relations 0.001 0.314 0.231 Economics 0.001 0.006 0.259 0.019 Philosophy 0.001 0.001 0.005 0.001 0.092 References Allen and Kitch, 1998 J.A. 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