Surviving in a male academia: gender gap, publication strategies and career stage in South European political science journals

Abstract

Women’s underrepresentation in top political science journals has been a central concern of both the American Political Science Association and the European Consortium of Political Research, which have promoted studies to assess the extent and features of the gender gap. However, so far in Southern Europe, research on this topic has been scarce. Our work adds to the literature by presenting new data on three journals: the Italian Political Science Review, the Spanish Political Science Review and South European Society and Politics. The research has three main goals: to gauge the gender gap in the three journals; to examine whether gender influences publication preferences; and to investigate how career intersects with gendered publication strategies. The analysis is built on a database of almost 800 articles and about 1400 authors, published in these three journals in 2011–2022. Our main findings are that South European journals reveal a gender gap similar to other international journals, where just one-third of authors are women; that this publication gap is accompanied by gendered publication strategies; and that the routes men and women follow to succeed in academic publishing diverge at every career stage. Finally, we argue that women's preferred strategies may not offer the optimum path to career success.