Accounting for gender research performance differences in ranking universities

Abstract

The literature on the theme of gender differences in research performance indicates a gap in favour of men over women. Beyond the understanding of the factors that could be at the basis of this phenomenon, it is worthwhile understanding if it would be appropriate to conduct the evaluation per population in a manner distinguished by gender. In fact, if there is some factor that structurally determines a penalization of performance by women researchers compared to men, then the comparative evaluation in the performance of organizations' that do not take gender into account will lead to an advantage for those that employ more men, under parity in the capacities of their staff. In this work we measure the differences in the performance and the rank of research institutions as observed when gender is taken into account compared to when it is ignored. The study population consists of all Italian universities and the performance measured in the hard sciences for the period 2006-2010.