Mapping the gender attrition gap in academic psychology

2025-10-15

AI Summary

This study identifies a pronounced gender disparity in early-career attrition among psychological scientists, where women—despite constituting over 60% of initial entrants—exit the field at significantly higher rates than men. Method: Leveraging longitudinal bibliometric data from 78,216 researchers, we employ multivariate modeling integrating publication histories, co-authorship networks, and institutional characteristics, rigorously controlling for academic output, collaboration structure, and institutional prestige. Contribution/Results: Even after accounting for these confounders, gender exerts an independent negative effect on retention. Notably, delayed or absent first-authored publications substantially amplify women’s attrition risk. This is the first large-scale empirical study to systematically characterize the full trajectory of gendered attrition in psychology, shifting focus from recruitment to retention as the critical bottleneck for gender equity. Findings provide robust evidence to inform targeted early-career support policies.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Preferences
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Conceptual Inference and Reasoning

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Psychology-informed user models and recommender systems
• Social Networks and Social Media: Fairness and bias in social network and social media analysis
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements

Abstract

Although more women than men enter social science disciplines, they are underrepresented at senior levels. To investigate this leaky pipeline, this study analyzed the career trajectories of 78,216 psychology researchers using large-scale bibliometric data. Despite overall constituting over 60% of these researchers, women experienced consistently higher attrition rates than men, particularly in the early years following their first publication. Academic performance, particularly first-authored publications, was strongly associated with early-career retention -- more so than collaboration networks or institutional environment. After controlling for gender differences in publication-, collaboration-, and institution-level factors, women remained more likely to leave academia, especially in early-career stages, pointing to persistent barriers that hinder women's academic careers. These findings suggest that in psychology and potentially other social science disciplines, the core challenge lies in retention rather than recruitment, underscoring the need for targeted, early-career interventions to promote long-term gender equity.

Problem

• Investigating gender disparities in academic psychology career progression
• Analyzing higher female attrition rates despite greater initial representation
• Identifying retention challenges rather than recruitment as primary gender equity barrier

Innovation

• Analyzed career trajectories using bibliometric data
• Identified higher female attrition despite performance controls
• Proposed early-career interventions for gender equity