Women’s lower self-citation yields competence-versus-likability penalties in academia

Evidence

These and other forms of personal branding are, of course, deeply entangled with social norms: studies have confirmed that men are more likely than women to boast their accomplishments, and that members of marginalized groups are less likely to engage in self-promotion. These disparities have staggering cultural and economic implications for workers. In the academy, we see these effects with citation practices: there is a marked gender divide in self-citation rates (31 percent of men and just 21 percent of women cite their own work), with real consequences for how others perceive the researcher. According to sociologists studying gender and citation practices, “While self-promotion enhances competence assessments, it also reduces a woman’s likability. These gendered perceptions of self-promotion likely influence perceptions of self-citation.” — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love, 621

Categorization

• XREF: Directly echoes the earlier chapter’s point that self-promotion violates gendered prescriptions for women; this gives it a measurable, quantified instantiation in citation data. — connects to: Academic schedule flexibility masks ever-accessible unbounded work hours — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 618; Self-promotion violates gendered prescriptions for women’s behavior — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 337; Women’s online self-presentation is judged more harshly than men’s in tech culture — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 722 (+4 more)
• SEED: Article angle: women’s lower self-citation as a measurable reflection of the aspirational-labor gender penalty — ‘the likability tax’ applied to knowledge workers.

Broader Connections

• Authorial attribution functions as a gendered economy of credit #expands (0.80) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 693
• Perceived role-mismatch lowers performance expectations for women leaders. #corroborates (0.78)
• Women’s online self-presentation is judged more harshly than men’s in tech culture #corroborates (0.75) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 722
• Women self-select away from the highest-reward positions, sustaining gender hegemony #complicates (0.72) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 767
• Espousing meritocracy while reinforcing sexist talk perpetuates low women’s participation in tech #complicates (0.72) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 693