Abstract
Discourse on gender diversity tends to overlook differences across levels of hierarchy (e.g., students, faculty, and editors) and critical dimensions (e.g., subdisciplines and geographical locations). Further ignored is its intersection with global diversity—representation from different countries. Here we document and contextualize gender disparity from perspectives of equal versus expected representation in journal editorship, by analyzing 68 top psychology journals in 10 subdisciplines. First, relative to ratios as students and faculty, women are underrepresented as editorial-board members (41%) and—unlike previous results based on one subfield—as editors-in-chief (34%) as well. Second, female ratios in editorship vary substantially across subdisciplines, genres of scholarship (higher in empirical and review journals than in method journals), continents/countries/regions (e.g., higher in North America than in Europe), and journal countries of origin (e.g., higher in American journals than in European journals). Third, under female (vs. male) editors-in-chief, women are much better represented as editorial-board members (47% vs. 36%), but the geographical diversity of editorial-board members and authorship decreases. These results reveal new local and broad contexts of gender diversity in editorship in psychology, with policy implications. Our approach also offers a methodological guideline for similar disparity research in other fields.
Following the upsurge of the women’s rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s, gender equality in the academic system was and continues to be scrutinized and discussed (for a comprehensive review, see Ceci et al., 2014). In psychological science, this important issue has also not escaped attention (e.g., Eagly & Riger, 2014; Gannon et al., 1992). For example, recent intense interests have been devoted to gender gaps in publications (Odic & Wojcik, 2020) and career advancement (Gruber et al., 2021). Paralleling many other sciences, the history of psychological science displays early male dominance followed by markedly increased female representation (Eagly & Riger, 2014).
In some prominent aspects, women appear to be well represented in psychology, filling classrooms and laboratories—and receiving at least 70% of all bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees in 2018 in the United States (National Science Foundation, 2021a). Likewise in the United Kingdom, women composed 81% of psychology students in the academic year 2020–2021 both as undergraduates and postgraduates. 1 Indeed, in discussions about gender equality, psychology has been championed to have achieved “a more balanced gender ratio than other men-dominated fields such as engineering” (Llorens et al., 2021, p. 2068). Although providing a memorable overall description, broad statements such as this fail to account for important variations in gender disparity at different levels of career hierarchy (e.g., students, faculty, editors) and in relevant dimensions (e.g., subfields, regions). Characterizing these variations and influencing factors is critical to a more accurate and contextualized understanding of gender equality in psychology, with important scientific ramifications and policy implications. Moreover, despite the importance of different types of diversity, the connection of gender diversity with other forms of diversity has received minimal scholarly attention.
Before proceeding to expound on these important but understudied contextual factors and an approach to characterize them, we first define and distinguish two central concepts in diversity research: disparity and underrepresentation. For using the two concepts interchangeably, as in many extant studies, has contributed to confusion. According to Merriam-Webster (2022d), parity is defined as “the quality or state of being equal or equivalent” (equal being “of the same measure, quantity, amount, or number as another”; Merriam-Webster, 2022b). Conversely, disparity is “a noticeable and usually significant difference or dissimilarity” (Merriam-Webster, 2022a). This equal-proportion definition of parity/disparity—and various similar terms such as “imbalance,” “minority,” and “gap”—has been widely adopted in the discourse on diversity in psychology and elsewhere (Gruber et al., 2021; Palser et al., 2022). On the other hand, underrepresentation is defined as being “inadequately represented” (Merriam-Webster, 2022e), for which the criterion for being inadequate (“not enough or good enough”; Merriam-Webster, 2022c) is debatable. Although disparity has sometimes or often been automatically interpreted to reflect underrepresentation or overrepresentation, the assumption in defining “adequacy” needs to be spelled out. In the context of gender representation, to differentiate underrepresentation from disparity, instead of using a simplistic criterion of having less than half, here we use a more nuanced and arguably more fitting criterion: having less than expected given the proportions of women with the prerequisites for a given outcome (e.g., in journal editorship, such prerequisites could be having a research doctorate degree or holding a tenured or tenure-track position at a top university). With these definitions and clarifications, we proceed to illustrate potential local context, broad context, and an approach to characterize these contexts.
Subdisciplines, Regions/Countries, and Genders of Leadership
Gender disparity may vary across different subdisciplines and geographical locations and under female and male leaders. Characterizing such heterogeneity is essential not only to understanding gender disparity and its modulating factors but also to devising and implementing effective policy and interventions.
First, psychology is not a homogeneous field of inquiry. At the nexus of many other fields, psychology runs the gamut of math-intensive subfields (e.g., psychological methods and statistics) and non-math-intensive subfields (e.g., counseling). Math intensiveness has been commonly evoked to describe or explain disparate female representations in academic science (Ceci et al., 2014). That is, unlike math-intensive fields, “women are close to parity with or even exceed the number of men” in non-math-intensive fields on the whole (Ceci et al., 2014). To the extent that subdisciplines of psychology vary in math intensiveness, one might also expect different levels of female representations in different subdisciplines of psychology. On the other hand, both in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and in humanities and social sciences (HSS), gender disparity varies substantially. For example, in 2020, women in U.S. colleges and universities received 56% of doctorates in life sciences but 19% in physics; 80% in art history, criticism, and conservation but 27% in philosophy and ethics (National Science Foundation, 2021a). Factors unrelated to math intensiveness, such as expectations of innate talent required for success (Leslie et al., 2015) or gender differences in interests (Su & Rounds, 2015), have been shown to underlie different levels of female representation across academic disciplines. To the extent that expectations of innate talent required for success may vary across subdisciplines of psychology, gender disparity may also vary across these subdisciplines. Characterizing gender disparity across different subdisciplines of psychology is thus necessary to understand its local context and to illuminate potential modulating factors.
Second, along the geographical line, because of different histories and social milieus, gender disparity in psychology in one region may not generalize to circumstances in other regions. For instance, the United States and the United Kingdom were ranked 30th and 23rd, respectively, out of 156 countries in the global gender-gap report in 2021 by the World Economic Forum. Conceivably, gender equality in the United States and the United Kingdon—be it in psychological science or in society at large—may not reflect situations in other countries.
Further compounding this issue is the uneven development of academic psychological science across the globe. Although its dominance has subdued, the United States still predominates in psychological science, claiming 72% of journal ownerships, 73% of editors-in-chief (EiCs), 60% of editorial-board members (EBMs), and 44% of authors in top-ranked journals in psychology; the United Kingdom trails as the second most dominant force (Lin & Li, 2022). Thus, gender equality in psychological science in the United States or the United Kingdom might not be representative of countries with less well-developed psychological science.
Third, gender disparity might also depend on the gender of leadership. For example, in the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, there were more female-invited speakers in accepted symposiums under female (vs. male) symposium chairs (Johnson et al., 2017). Likewise, in dental journals, there were more female EBMs when more women occupied editorial-leadership positions (Ioannidou & Rosania, 2015). In both cases, however, the differences might reflect that female (vs. male) symposium chairs or editors were more likely to be in subdisciplines with more abundant female representation. Thus, controlling for subdisciplines would be necessary to provide a strong test for gender disparity under female and male leaders.
Understanding gender disparity across different subdisciplines and regions/countries and under female and male leaders is not just a matter of academic curiosity but has scientific and social implications. Gender diversity pays an epistemic dividend, leading to increased diversity in values (Harding, 1986; Longino, 2002); broadening of research perspectives, questions, and domains (Nielsen et al., 2017); improved collective problem solving (Sulik et al., 2022); and ultimately more scientific innovations (Hofstra et al., 2020). Moreover, because of the inherently individual and social nature of scientific practices—as exemplified by background assumptions, values, and biases in research investigations and peer review—increased diversity maximizes the objectivity and, in turn, the trustworthiness of sciences (Oreskes, 2019). Thus, beyond ethical and moral considerations, effective policy for gender diversity helps enhance scientific innovations and the trustworthiness of sciences.
Articles on outcome disparities therefore customarily propose suggestions, recommendations, solutions, or policies to mitigate or eliminate disparities. Policy, for better or worse, has the propensity to be sweeping. But without understanding and taking into consideration local contexts—such as specific subfields, regional/cultural contexts, and gender of the leadership—policy is unlikely to be effective and can even be counterproductive when implemented, leading to confusion or resentment despite the good intentions behind them.
Intersection With Global Diversity
Local contexts—differences between subdisciplines, regions/countries, and genders of leaders—are not the only critical contexts that are often neglected. Equally concerning, in proposals targeting gender disparity, there is a dearth of considerations regarding the broad context, particularly intersections with diversity in other domains (Liu et al., 2019). Such externalities (i.e., unintended consequences or potential spillover effects to diversity in other domains) have critical policy implications. Yet by its nature, anticipating unintended consequences is inherently difficult. Much research is therefore urgently needed to better understand the broad context of diversity, such as how gender diversity may be interconnected to global diversity—the representations of different regions and countries.
Global diversity, like other forms of diversity, is indispensable to psychological science as a discipline because it helps to stimulate epistemological plurality, widen the range of psychological phenomena, expose varied manifestations of phenomena across different sociocultural contexts, and provide the necessary bedrock to study generalizations and external validity (as detailed in Lin & Li, 2022). However, the track record of psychology in global diversity is rather poor (Cheon et al., 2020; Lin & Li, 2022; Rad et al., 2018). Psychological science has long been and continues to be dominated by researchers from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies who study samples drawn primarily from WEIRD communities. But WEIRD samples are unrepresentative of humans in general, be it in terms of susceptibility to visual illusions or behaviors in ultimatum games (Henrich et al., 2010). As a discipline devoted to the study of human behavior, psychology cannot afford to study only a subset of human beings but requires perspectives that are enriched by different forms of diversity, including gender diversity and global diversity.
Therefore, the potential connections between gender diversity and global diversity are critical to examine. Previous studies suggest that the extent of international collaboration, as measured by coauthorship, depends on gender. In aggregate, female collaborations are more domestic and less international than their male counterparts (Abramo et al., 2013; Lariviere et al., 2013). But the effect is age-dependent: Gender disparities in international collaboration are highest for older scientists but lowest (and statistically insignificant) for young scientists (Kwiek & Roszka, 2021). And in some disciplines, women collaborate internationally more than men (Kwiek & Roszka, 2021). How global diversity might be related to gender remains an open question.
Gender Disparity in Editorship in Psychology Journals
Of the many domains to examine gender disparity and its local and broad contexts, the gender composition of editorship in top psychology journals is critical to evaluate for two main reasons. First, editorship at top journals—journals that enjoy the highest visibility and steer the scholarship directions of the fields—represents central positions of power in the landscape of scholarship, shaping research agendas, organizational cultures, and the distribution of academic currency—high-profile publications and authorship (Chapman et al., 2019). Second, editorship is much more amenable to policy interventions than other outcomes are. For example, unlike authorship or department-chair positions, representations in EBMs can be readily increased or decreased by selecting researchers with specific demographic features from a typically large pool of qualified researchers.
Specifically, in the modus operandi of academic journals, the EiC—as the editorial leader of a journal—is in a position to determine editorial policy, direction, standards, and practices and to appoint new EBMs (including associate editors and consulting or review editors). In the day-to-day operation of the journal, the EiC and EBMs further decide on the fate of submitted manuscripts, from triage decisions and reviewer selection to final editorial decisions. If diversity pays an epistemic dividend and makes better science, then diversity in positions of power—in this case, gender diversity in editorship—is bound to expedite it by setting the research agenda to embrace a broader range of research questions, methods, and perspectives. Moreover, diversity in leadership can have knock-on effects, as exemplified by the reduction in gender stereotypes in organizational language following the hiring of female leaders (Lawson et al., 2022).
However, despite its importance, there are scant data informing and contextualizing gender disparity in editorship in psychology. The limited research so far has primarily focused on either a specific segment or just an overall description of psychology journals to provide a glimpse into gender disparity in editorship. In particular, Gruber et al. (2021) surveyed 15 prominent interdisciplinary journals in 2019: 2 11 from American Psychological Association (APA) and four from Association for Psychological Science (APS). They found that 48% of the EiCs (10/21) and 42% of the associate editors (25/60) were women; the latter figure was interpreted as reflecting “gender imbalances in power” (Gruber et al., 2021). We note here that neither proportion is significantly different from gender parity (binomial tests, p = .5 and p = .123). Moreover, these numbers represent an improvement over an earlier survey from 30 journals with the highest 5-year impact factors (IFs), which showed 34.2% of female EiCs and 40.9% of female associate editors (Eagly & Riger, 2014). 3 Likewise, a recent study, assessing the top 50 generalist journals in psychology on the basis of journal IFs, found that as of late 2020, 43% of the EiCs were women, a ratio not different from gender parity—i.e., there were “no significant difference in gender representation” (Palser et al., 2022). Only at the level of EBMs (excluding EiCs and associate editors) did Palser et al. (2002) find that women occupied a minority proportion, at 40%.
Although these results suggest a gender-parity status in EiC positions in generalist psychology journals and slight gender disparity in other editorship positions, it is not clear how accurately they depict psychological science on the whole. The results from generalist journals may not generalize to other subfields, and interdisciplinary journals by APA and APS may not represent other subfields—which may also suffer from specific practices or bias at APA and APS. Therefore, to accurately capture gender representation in editorship, it is necessary to go beyond a specific category of journals and survey journals from diverse subfields.
The Current Study
Here, we overcame these limitations and surveyed 10 subdisciplines in psychological science, totaling 68 journals, 82 EiCs, and 5,571 EBMs. For each journal, we recorded the EiC(s) and EBMs and coded information on gender and country of affiliation. To capture different genres of scholarship, we categorized journals as outlets primarily for empirical articles, method articles, or review articles. Given the power of the EiC in selecting EBMs, we further examined how the gender of the EiC affected the gender and global diversity of EBMs.
We address three questions: (a) What is the current status of gender disparity in EiCs and EBMs in top psychology journals from diverse subfields? (b) How does gender disparity differ across subdisciplines and genres of scholarship and between regions/countries? and (c) How does the gender of EiC affect the gender and global diversity of EBMs? In addressing these questions, we take the perspective of disparity (based on equal proportions) in default as in previous studies, but as applicable, we also consider the perspective of underrepresentation (based on expected proportions), connecting with female representation in other levels—as students and as faculty. Thus, female ratios of psychology students and faculty in the United States and the United Kingdom were analyzed and reported as well.
To ensure exceptional accuracy in gender coding, we used multiple methods to cross-examine the results, using a combination of manual coding (based on pictures and pronounces), common gendered first names, and name-to-gender databases. Considering the ambiguous nature of the gender of many given names, particularly Chinese names in pinyin and common unisex names (e.g., Andrea, Jo, Matti, Nicola, Robin, and Simone), our approach helps to accurately characterize gender diversity and its modulating factors. In doing so, we have created a detailed data set with highly accurate gender and geographical labels; the anonymized data set is freely available online to facilitate reuse and scientific exchanges (the full version is available upon request to Z. Lin).
Although many factors are likely to contribute to gender gaps in academic outcomes (editorship being one example), in the discussion, we synthesize them into two categories: one based on objective metrics such as publications, citations, and seniority and the other based on potential biases, including in metrics of research impact themselves. Furthermore, on the basis of the current findings and other research, we elucidate four policy implications for improving gender equality in editorship.
Method
Transparency and openness
Data, analysis code, and research materials used in the study are available online (https://osf.io/dc9m4/). Also see Table A, Tables S1 to S4, and Figure S1 in the Supplemental Material available online.
Journal selection and categorization
As described in Lin and Li (2022), to categorize subdisciplines in psychology, we used the 10 subcategorizations of psychology as provided by the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) from Clarivate: 4 applied, biological, clinical, developmental, educational, experimental, mathematical, multidisciplinary, psychoanalysis, and social. Psychology was also indexed by the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), but only as one generic category.
The total number of journals ranged from 13 to 138 in each category (including the SCIE generic category). In each category, we selected the top 10% of journals (rounded up to the nearest integer) according to the 2-year journal IFs from the latest Journal Citation Reports (JCR; which was the 2020 edition when the data were collected in spring 2021). The 2020 2-year IF was the average citations of publications from 2017 and 2018 in the year 2019. All of the selected journals in the SCIE psychology category except one (Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics) were also part of the included journals in the 10 SSCI psychology subcategories. Moreover, some journals belonged to two subcategories and thus were included for subdiscipline analysis in both subcategories (e.g., Child Development in both developmental and educational subdisciplines).
To capture the different genres of scholarship published by academic journals, we independently coded the journals as outlets primarily for empirical articles, method articles, or review articles; discrepancies were resolved through discussions. 5 We then examined the editorial board in each journal. However, one journal, Nature Human Behaviour, had no external editorial board and was excluded and replaced by the next journal in the corresponding subcategory, Developmental Science. The final sample includes 68 different journals from 10 SSCI subcategories (67 journals) and one generic SCIE category (one journal). The full list of the 68 journals and their pertinent properties—including journal names, subcategories, outlet types/genres, and journal IFs—are provided in Appendix A.
Journal editorial board
The exact title for the EiC varied across journals (e.g., “Editor” in Psychoanalytic Psychology, “Co-Editors” in Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, “Editor-in-Chief” in Annals of Behavioral Medicine). Most journals had one EiC; some had multiple EiCs. All EiCs were included in our analysis. For example, some journals comprised independent sections with separate editorial boards (e.g., three EiCs for Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). However, deputy EiCs (e.g., Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry), past editors, founding but not current editors, and editors serving as full-time staff from the publisher (Lindsey Drayton at Trends in Cognitive Sciences) were excluded. The final data set includes 82 EiCs (the record was current as of May 2021) and 5,571 EBMs (the record was extracted during February and March 2021).
Gender coding
To evaluate the accuracy of different coding methods, as detailed in the Supplemental Material (Gender Coding section), we coded the genders of the 5,653 EiCs and EBMs in several steps, incorporating manual search, known genders of common names, and automated classifications. About 40% of the names were subject to manual coding first, on the basis of pronouns and profile pictures; approximately 40% were subject to known-name-to-gender coding first, on the basis of common female and male first names; and the remaining were subject to algorithmic coding first, on the basis of a name-to-gender algorithm designed to work cross-culturally (https://gender-api.com). The estimated accuracy rate for manual labeling was about 99.5%; using known genders of common names was about 98.5%; relying on the algorithm for names with a gender probability of at least 90% and manually coding the rest was about 99.5%, a method we recommend for future research. To maximize coding accuracy, the final result was based on cross-checking manual and automated classifications; discrepancies were resolved through manual double-checking.
Note that our gender coding was based on self-identification (pronouns and names) and appearance (photos). To the extent that the information coded here reflected gender presentation, it was inclusive of trans men and women. On the other hand, because the focus here was on the number of women in editorial positions, the coding scheme was not designed to identify nonbinary people.
Faculty gender analysis
In addition to the analysis of editorship in top psychology journals, for comparison, we also examined faculty gender disparity in psychology PhD programs. Given the dominance in editorship in top journals by the United States (73% of EiCs, 60% of EBMs) and, to a much less extent, the United Kingdom (10% of EiCs, 9% of EBMs), we focused on faculty in the United States and the United Kingdom.
As detailed in the Supplemental Material (Faculty Coding section), in the United States, the final list of the top 30 PhD programs included 199 assistant professors (58.3% women), 241 associate professors (48.5% women), and 747 full professors (41.6% women). In the United Kingdom, at the national level, women composed 56.7% of full-time academic staff, including 59.1% of junior academics, 45.7% of other senior academics, and 40.7% of full professors—a pattern not very different from the U.S. top programs. In the top 10 psychology schools in the United Kingdom, women composed 48.3% of full-time academic staff, including 59.6% of junior academics, 53.3% of other senior academics, and 38.1% of full professors.
Diversity analysis
To quantify global diversity, we used two diversity indexes: the Simpson index (Simpson, 1949) and the Shannon index (Shannon, 1948). These indexes were originally developed to measure species diversity in an ecosystem on the basis of the total number of different species present and their relative abundance. They have been adopted in diversity research to measure the variety in the distribution of an attribute, such as region and race (Harrison & Klein, 2007). Here, we focused on geographical variety. Geographical territories were defined by the locations of the professional affiliations of EiCs and EBMs (rather than their nationalities, which were private information). Locations were analyzed (a) at the country level first, except for China (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan were analyzed separately in light of their different political systems and developments in psychology); (b) and then at the continent level, politically defined (e.g., Russia was classified as part of Europe using the United Nations classification).
In measuring geographical variety, the Simpson index (D) calculates the probability that the professional affiliations of two randomly selected persons from a sample are from different regions. An unbiased estimator of the Simpson index is
In this formula, n represents the count in each region, and N represents the total count in all regions. D takes values between 0 (no diversity) and 1 (maximum diversity) such that higher values denote greater diversity in a nonlinear manner.
The Shannon index (H) is an information statistic index. An unbiased estimator of the Shannon index is
In this formula, i represents each region, s represents the total number of regions,
Applied to diversity analysis, both indexes account for abundance (i.e., richness) and evenness of the regions present. Compared with the Shannon index, the Simpson index gives more weight to common or dominant regions. Thus, relatively speaking, whereas the Shannon index is more sensitive to changes in regions with small representations, the Simpson index is more sensitive to changes in dominant regions. Another minor difference is that the Simpson index is less sensitive to sample sizes than the Shannon index, although neither index is highly sensitive to sample sizes to begin with. Biases—from sampling errors and small sample sizes—can be mitigated using unbiased estimators of the diversity indexes.
To extend diversity analysis from EBMs to authors, we also examined the countries of affiliations for the authors from the 68 journals. Authorship information was based on “contributions by country/region” provided by JCR for each journal, which specified the exact counts for all the countries/regions that contributed articles to the journal from 2017 to 2019. For each article, each country/region received 1 count as long as it had one author affiliation in that article. The total count of authorship was 37,801 from 110 countries/regions. 6
Diversity values were then compared using diversity t tests as implemented by PAST (Version 4.07; Hammer et al., 2001). Diversity t tests were based on variance estimations separately for the Shannon index (Hutcheson, 1970) and for the Simpson index (Brower et al., 1998).
Results
The Results section is organized into two parts. On the basis of our data set with highly accurate gender coding, in the first part, we characterize the current state of gender disparity in EiCs and EBMs in top psychology journals from diverse fields, focusing on (a) the overall status of gender disparity in editorship, (b) variations across subdisciplines and genres of scholarship and between regions/countries, (c) variations as a function of journal country/region of origin, and (d) whether gender disparity reflects underrepresentation. In the second part, we examine how the gender of the EiC affects gender diversity and global diversity of EBMs. Binomial tests were conducted to test whether the proportion of women was lower than the gender parity of .5 (one-sided). The χ2 tests were used to examine whether gender balance, based on female and male counts, differed in a given dimension, such as between American, British, and European journals or under female and male EiCs.
Gender disparity in editorship in top psychology journals
Overall gender disparity
Table 1 shows the overall gender disparity in editorship and its heterogeneity across subdisciplines, genres, and the globe. In total, women compose 41.1% of the 5,571 EBMs (binomial test, p < .001) and 34.1% of 82 EiCs (p = .003; comparison between EBMs and EiCs: χ2(1, N = 5,653) = 1.33, p = .249).
Proportions of Female Editorial-Board Members and Editors-in-Chief Across Subdisciplines, Journal Types/Genres, Countries, and Continents
Statistically significant binomial tests (i.e., gender imbalance). Exact p values are provided in Table S2 in the Supplemental Material available online.
Because the full list of countries is too long to list here, only the two countries with the most EBMs are listed individually (the United States and the United Kingdom); the rest are summarized as one entry, under “other countries.” For EBMs, “other countries” includes 54 countries; for EiCs, “other countries” includes Canada, Australia, and seven countries in Europe. For a breakdown of individual countries (with > 6 EBMs), see Table 2.
Variations across subdisciplines, genres, and regions/countries
Female ratios vary substantially across subdisciplines, genres, and the globe (Table 1). Given the limited number of EiCs (82), comparisons of the female ratios of EiCs across different categories can be only tentative. The primary focus therefore is on EBMs.
Of the 10 major subdisciplines, women represent a small minority in experimental psychology (35.5%, p < .001) but reach parity with men in developmental psychology (49.9%, p = .5), revealing major differences across topics of psychological research. 7 Indeed, at the journal level, female ratios range from 9.5% to 73.3% (see Fig. 1; for exact numbers, see Table S1 in the Supplemental Material). Female ratios also vary considerably across different genres of scholarship: A minority in all three genres (all ps < .001), women compose an even lower proportion of EBMs in method journals (25.2%) than in review journals (39.3%), χ2(1, N = 1,079) = 14.18, p < .001, and empirical journals (42.2%), χ2(1, N = 4,710) = 23.95, p < .001.
Gender disparities of editorial-board members (EBMs) in the top 68 psychology journals as of early 2021. For the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, the editor was a full-time employee at the publisher, and hence this journal was not included in the editor-in-chief (EiC) analysis.
Heterogeneity in female representation further finds itself in geographical locations at both the continent and country/region levels. Across the continents (Table 1), female ratios run from 26.3% (in South America) to 66.7% (in Africa). Between the two primary continents in psychological research, the share of women is significantly higher in North America (42.7%) than in Europe (37.4%), χ2(1, N = 5,069.5) = 10.771, p = .001, both a minority share nevertheless (ps < .001). At the country level (Table 2; see also Fig. S1 with continent information in the Supplemental Material), for countries with at least six EBMs, female ratios run from 12.6% (in Belgium, p < .001) to 57.1% (in India, p = .773). Of the six major countries in psychological research, women reach parity with men in Canada (48.9%, p = .383) but remain a minority in the other five major countries (United States = 42.2%; United Kingdom = 40.6%; Germany = 38.6%; the Netherlands = 41.0%; and Australia = 39.5%; all binomial ps < .007). The share of women is statistically higher in Canada than in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia (χ2, ps < .04; the difference between Canada and the Netherlands is statistically not significant, p = .102).
Proportions of Female Editorial-board Members in Different Countries or Regions
Note: Countries with six or fewer editorial-board members are not listed.
Gender disparity as a function of journal country/region of origin
To the extent that the journal-owning organizations were responsible for choosing the EiCs, who in turn selected EBMs, the differences in female ratios in various countries can be said to reflect the practices of these selecting organizations—rather than those of the academic affiliations and home countries of the selected editors. To probe potential differences in attention to female editorial representation, we examine female representation in editorship as a function of the country/region of origin of the journals.
Of the eight countries/regions that own the 68 journals, the United States owns 49 journals, the United Kingdom owns 10, and the remaining countries/regions own from one to three (which are all in Europe and are combined because of the small samples; see Table 3). We observe an overall higher percentage of women EBMs in American journals (42.5%) than British journals (39.9%); the difference is not statistically significant, χ2(1) = 1.51, p = .220, and both ratios are much higher than in other European journals (27.9%), χ2(2) = 33.87, p < .001. The share of women EiCs is higher in American journals (40.0%) than in British (21.4%) and other European journals (23.1%); the differences are not statistically significant, χ2(2) = 2.55, p = .279.
Proportions of Female Editorial-board Members and Editors-in-Chief as a Function of the Journal Location
Gender disparity and underrepresentation
These results demonstrate that women share a smaller proportion of editorship (both as EBMs and as EiCs) than their male counterparts, with substantial heterogeneity across subdisciplines, genres of scholarship, and the globe. Although the pattern of gender disparity (i.e., unequal proportions) in editorship is clear, the question of whether women are thus underrepresented is more nuanced. That is, are women represented to the extent that is less than expected? Given the gender imbalance, it is not unreasonable to argue that women are underrepresented with respect to the population share.
A pertinent criterion is to consider the populations with the prerequisites to become EBMs and EiCs. Unfortunately, such prerequisites are hard to define and do not lend themselves well for accurate quantification and measure. Simplifications are therefore necessary, such as to having a research doctorate degree or holding a tenured or tenure-track position at top universities. Given the dominance in top psychology journals by the United States (73% of EiCs, 60% of EBMs) and, to a lesser extent, by the United Kingdom (10% of EiCs, 9% of EBMs), we focus on the gender distribution of the population in the pipeline to become journal editors in the United States and the United Kingdom.
In 2020, women claimed 71% of research doctorate degrees in the United States—a trend that has lasted for more than a decade (e.g., in 2004, that number was 66%; American Psychological Association, 2021). In the top 30 psychology PhD programs in the United States in early 2022, we found that women held 58.3% of assistant-professor positions, 48.5% of associate-professor positions, and 41.6% of full-professor positions. For the United Kingdom, in the academic year 2020/21, women composed 78% of psychology postgraduate students (research) 8 and 57% of full-time academic staff in psychology and behavioral sciences—of which, 59.1% were junior academics (in the top 10 psychology schools: 59.6%), 45.7% were non-full-professor senior academics (top 10: 53.3%), and 40.7% were full professors (top 10: 38.1%).
In light of these statistics on female-faculty representation in the United States and the United Kingdom (from 38.1% to 59.6%), the equal-portion criterion (50%) seems not off the mark. Arguably, the exception might be for EiCs, which are senior positions typically filled by full professors. Using the rank of full professors as the criterion (Eagly & Riger, 2014), overall female representation as EiCs (34.1%) also falls short of their representation as full professors in the United States (41.6%) or in the United Kingdom (40.7% nationwide, 38.1% for the top 10 schools). In the United States, the female ratio as EiCs (40.5%) approaches that of full professors in top psychology programs (41.6%). But note the contrast between (a) the minority position of women as EiCs and as full professors in top programs and (b) the persistent (>18 years) and vast (more than 2 to 1) outnumbering of female holders of research doctorate degrees in psychology over their male counterparts. In the United Kingdom, women claim a smaller share of EiCs (36.8%) than their share of full-professor posts (40.7% nationwide, 38.1% for the top 10 schools).
Gender diversity and global diversity in EBMs under female and male EiCs
EiCs are typically tasked with selecting members of the editorial board. In the second part of this section, we therefore ask whether and how the gender of the EiC might affect the gender and geographical composition of the EBMs.
Gender diversity of EBMs
As Table 4 shows (see also Fig. 1 at the journal level), women, though remaining a relative minority, are significantly better represented as EBMs under female EiCs (47.0%, binomial p = .005) than under male EiCs (36.3%, binomial p < .001) χ2(1, N = 4,858) = 55.6, p < .001.
Proportions of Female Editorial-board Members as a Function of Editor-in-Chief Gender Across Subdisciplines, Journal Types/Genres, Countries, and Continents
Note: For EBMs, “other countries” includes 54 countries; for EiCs, “other countries” includes Canada, Australia, and seven countries in Europe. EBMs = editorial-board members; EICs = editors-in-chief.
Statistically significant binomial tests (i.e., gender imbalance).
Statistically significant χ2 tests (i.e., different gender disparities of EBMs under male and female EiCs). Exact p values are provided in Table S4 in the Supplemental Material available online.
Increased female representation as EBMs under female (vs. male) EiCs is not due to differences in subdisciplines, 9 journal genres, or geographical locations. In the same subdisciplines, the proportions of female EBMs are still much higher under female (vs. male) EiCs, including in developmental, multidisciplinary, social, and clinical psychology (χ2, all ps < .001 except for clinical, p = .034). Indeed, in developmental and multidisciplinary psychology, women even become a significant majority of EBMs under female EiCs (both ps < .008), in contrast with being a minority under male EiCs (both ps < .008).
Likewise, in the same journal genres, the proportions of female EBMs are much higher under female (vs. male) EiCs: 47.1% vs. 37.1% in empirical journals, χ2(1, N = 3,969) = 39.9, p < .001, and 46.5% vs. 37.4% in review journals, χ2(1, N = 671) = 3.7, p = .054. Corroborating these results, we found that a similar gender effect manifests itself in the same geographical locations. That is, for the same country (e.g., the United States and the United Kingdom) or continent (i.e., North America, Oceania, and Europe), the proportions of female EBMs are generally much higher under female (vs. male) EiCs: For example, the ratios are 47.4% versus 37.5% for the United States, χ2(1, N = 3,121) = 30.3, p < .001, and 44.9% versus 33.0% for Europe, χ2(1, N = 1,065.5) = 13.7, p < .001.
However, this gender effect is not uniform. For example, the proportions of female EBMs do not significantly differ under female and male EiCs in some other subdisciplines—the pattern is even numerically reversed in the experimental subdiscipline. The same is true for some countries and continents—for example, the pattern is numerically reversed for Asia.
Global diversity in EBMs and authorship
If the appointment of women to EiCs helps to reduce gender disparity in editorship, would it also help to reduce geographical disparity—that is, the observation that editorship is more concentrated in certain geographical locations (e.g., the United States or North America) than in other locations (Lin & Li, 2022)?
A calculation based on Table 4 reveals that the proportion of U.S.-based EBMs is 61.1% under male EiCs but increases to 69.0% under female EiCs. Likewise, the proportion of EBMs from North America is 65.7% under male EiCs but increases to 73.5% under female EiCs. To quantify geographical diversity, we use the Simpson diversity index (e.g., Espin et al., 2017) and the Shannon diversity index. 10 As Table 5 shows, geographical diversity for both EBMs and authorship is significantly reduced under female (vs. male) EiCs, a pattern opposite to gender diversity.
Simpson (D) and Shannon (H) Unbiased Diversity Indexes of Geographical Locations (i.e., Countries/Regions or Continents) in Authorship and Editorial-board Members as a Function of the Editor-in-Chief Gender
Note: Higher Ds and Hs represent higher levels of diversity (D ranges from 0 to 1, H ranges from 0 to ln S, with S being the number of locations). EBM = editorial-board member; EIC = editor-in-chief.
Discussion
Across 10 subdisciplines in psychological science, we combine gender and geographical-diversity analysis to characterize and contextualize gender disparity in editorship. A number of notable strengths in combination set the current study apart from previous efforts: (a) Top journals from diverse fields were selected on the basis of objective criteria; (b) highly accurate gender coding was achieved and verified; (c) rich contextual analyses were extended to subdisciplines, genres of scholarship, continents, and countries; (d) effects of the EiC gender were analyzed for both gender diversity and global diversity; and (e) perspectives of disparity (equal proportions) and underrepresentation (with respect to representation as students and faculty) were conceptualized and analytically compared.
This approach allows us to reveal several novel findings, with new implications for policy. First, women are overall a minority both as EBMs (41%) and as EiCs (34%) in top psychology journals. This gender disparity could be argued to suggest various degrees of female underrepresentation given their population share, proportions of psychology students and trainees (e.g., research doctorate degrees), and proportions of psychology faculty (e.g., tenure-track/tenured faculty in top U.S. psychology programs; academic staff in British universities). Second, female ratios in editorship vary substantially across subdisciplines, genres of scholarship (empirical, review, and method), continents, and countries/regions. With a few exceptions that reach gender parity (e.g., EBMs in developmental psychology; EBMs in Canada and Denmark), the majority of subdisciplines and regions witness varying degrees of gender imbalances. For example, female EBMs range from 13% to 57% across countries/regions (Table 2). The share of women in EBMs is significantly higher in North America (42.7%) than in Europe (37.4%), a pattern opposite to that in the economics profession (Auriol et al., 2022). Although 72% of the top 68 psychology journals are American journals, gender disparity in EiCs and EBMs is not unique to the United States but transpires in all the eight countries/regions that own the 68 journals. Indeed, relatively speaking, women are better represented in editorship in American than British and other European journals (Table 3). Third, under female (vs. male) EiCs, women—although still underrepresented overall—are much closer to parity with men as EBMs (47% vs. 36%) and in some subdisciplines become the majority (e.g., developmental and multidisciplinary psychology). However, the improvement in gender diversity under female (vs. male) EiCs is accompanied by a decrease in the geographical diversity of EBMs and authorship.
Thus, unlike previous studies that found gender parity in EiCs (48% and 43%, respectively, in Gruber et al., 2021; Palser et al., 2022), here women are found to be a clear minority in EiCs (34%). This discrepancy might be puzzling at first glance but can be reconciled by considering that gender parity varies substantially across subdisciplines, as documented in our heterogeneity analysis. In particular, the two studies cited above focused on interdisciplinary/generalist journals, a category in which women are better represented than in other categories (see Table 1). Indeed, in interdisciplinary journals, here, too, women are found to be well represented as EiCs (43%). These results underscore subdisciplinary heterogeneity and further highlight the importance of considering local contexts.
Moreover, the gender gap in EBMs is found to be significantly reduced under female (vs. male) EiCs. Increased gender parity under female leaders extends prior reports on conference speakers in psychology (Johnson et al., 2017) and on EBMs in dental journals (Ioannidou & Rosania, 2015). However, the effects found in the prior studies were confounded by alternative accounts that assume that female (vs. male) symposium chairs or editors were in subdisciplines with more abundant female representation in the first place. By differentiating subdisciplines, here we control for subdisciplinary differences and thus provide strong evidence for increased female participation under female leaders.
However, the gender effect does not generalize to geographical diversity—which actually decreases under female (vs. male) EiCs for both EBMs and authorship. This finding finds support from the observation that academic collaborations are more domestic and less international in women than in men (Abramo et al., 2013; Lariviere et al., 2013). However, gender disparities in international collaboration, although highest for old scientists, are reduced and eliminated for younger scientists (Kwiek & Roszka, 2021). Given that EiCs are typically senior scientists, age-accentuated gender disparities in international collaboration are consistent with higher geographical diversity under male (vs. female) EiCs. With similar levels of international collaboration between female and male scientists in the younger generation, it is expected that when these young scientists become EiCs, increased gender parity under female EiCs may not be accompanied by decreased global diversity in EBMs.
Explaining the gender gap in editorship
Why are women underrepresented in editorship in top psychology journals? The causes of gender disparity in general have attracted heated debates (e.g., Ceci et al., 2014; Hofstra et al., 2020; Leslie et al., 2015). An array of factors likely contributes to gender gaps in academic outcomes such as editorship. Given the current findings and previous research, we synthesize them into two categories: one based on objective metrics (publications, citations, seniority) and the other based on biases, including in metrics of research impact themselves.
For objective metrics, analyses of publications and citations indicate a female disadvantage. For example, in a recent study on educational psychology from 2009 to 2016, top-producing women were found, on average, to have less seniority, fewer publications, and fewer sole authorship and first authorship than their male counterparts (Greenbaum et al., 2018). More broadly across psychology, according to a data set of publications from 2008 to 2012 (Lariviere et al., 2013), female authors were found to be less published and less cited (Eagly & Miller, 2016). Corroborating this finding, on the basis of publications in 125 psychology journals from 2003 to 2018, a recent study found fewer female authors (44%) than male authors (56%) in psychology articles, and the gender gap increased further in high-impact journals. Indeed, in review journals, women shared only 30% of first authors. In tandem with authorship, citations show a similar gender disparity—female first authors on average received 76% of citations of those by male first authors (Odic & Wojcik, 2020).
Differences in gender disparity in editorship across subdisciplines may be attributed to different disparities at the level of authorship. For example, among the 10 subdisciplines examined by Odic and Wojcik (2020), developmental psychology had the highest proportion of female authors (59.5%), whereas sensation and perception had the lowest proportion (29.9%). As revealed here, in EBMs, too, developmental psychology has the highest proportion of female EBMs (49.9%), whereas experimental psychology—which includes sensation and perception—has the lowest proportion (35.5%). Differences in the proportion of female authors across subdisciplines may in turn reflect different proportions of female researchers and trainees in these fields. Likewise, the current finding of more severe female underrepresentation in editorship in method (25.2%) than review (39.3%) and empirical (42.2%) journals is consistent with disparate gender participation rates in math-intensive fields and non-math-intensive fields in general (Ceci et al., 2014). The geographical heterogeneity in gender disparity in editorship may also reflect different proportions of female authors and researchers across different regions and countries, but empirical data are scarce—future research is needed to close this gap.
To the extent that editorship reflects eminence, prestige, and leadership, women’s lower research productivity (e.g., number of publications and citations per publication) and reduced representation at the more senior levels (e.g., as full professors) may partly explain the underrepresentation in editorship in top psychology journals. Indeed, gender disparity in seniority has a direct bearing on editorship because editors, particularly at the EiC level, are generally senior researchers.
Various causes might underlie gender disparity in research productivity. Their relative contributions are still unclear (Gruber et al., 2021). Some contributing factors may include gender differences in the time and energy devoted to activities unrelated to research—ranging from child bearing and child rearing, the care of family and elderly parents, to academic service commitments—partly owing to different social roles of women and men. Others may include gender differences in career choices, such as preferences for people- and service-oriented careers, desire or willingness for more teaching and institutional-service responsibilities and administrative duties, or priorities of caring versus competition.
However, these objective metrics do not tell the full story. Gender disparities in research productivity and seniority may be manifestations of biases. For example, the reduced representation at senior levels for women than men is at least partly attributed to historical gender discrimination—when the current senior psychologists started out their careers. Although some scholars believe that overt gender discrimination “has ceased being a valid cause of women’s underrepresentation” (Ceci et al., 2014), evidence also points to covert discrimination. For example, despite survey experiments showing preferences in academic hiring for female applicants over comparable male applicants in the United States (Williams & Ceci, 2015) and the Nordic region (Carlsson et al., 2021), recent field studies have revealed biases against women in actual hiring practices, such as relationship-status discrimination (Rivera, 2017). That is, faculty search committees may actively consider female (but not male) candidates’ relationship status when selecting hires by assuming heterosexual female (but not male) candidates as not “movable” when their partners have academic or high-status jobs. These covert discriminatory practices reflect the wider sociocultural stereotypes and organizational practices (Gruber et al., 2021; Llorens et al., 2021). Indeed, gender stereotypes against girls and women persist to varying degrees today and develop early in childhood (Bian et al., 2017; Leslie et al., 2015).
Covert discrimination is not limited to academic hiring but permeates other academic affairs (for a lived experience of gender inequality, see Gilbert et al., 2021), including in service and research evaluation. For example, with respect to service, women take up a disproportionate burden of institutional service, which not only takes up their valuable time for research but also makes it harder for them to take on leadership positions such as EiCs. For research evaluation, although recent empirical analyses suggest that with only very occasional exceptions, “manuscript reviewing and grant funding are gender neutral” (Ceci et al., 2014), other studies have revealed biases. Examining approximately 1.2 million U.S. doctoral recipients from 1977 to 2015, a recent study found that although women and other minority groups produce higher rates of scientific novelty, their contributions are nevertheless devalued and discounted (Hofstra et al., 2020). For example, compared with gender (and racial) majorities, novel contributions by gender (and racial) minorities are taken up by other scholars at lower rates. In addition, compared with majority groups, equally meaningful contributions from gender (and racial) minorities are less likely to result in successful scientific careers. In other words, objective metrics of research impact themselves can be biased against women and other minority groups (including scientists with gender-nonconforming experience).
Policy implications
Observational research does not establish causal relations, and ours is no exception. Experimental and longitudinal approaches can help explore how gender disparities might be causally related to various factors, consequences, and other forms of diversity. Nevertheless, our research represents critical steps in illuminating the state and nature of gender disparity in psychological science, with several new implications for policy aiming to enhance gender equality.
First, because gender disparities in editorship in top psychology journals are not limited to EBMs but also transpire at the level of EiCs, the scope of potential policy interventions may need to be broad, to include both EBMs and EiCs. Although one may take comfort in knowing that the female representation of EiCs in the United States (40.5%) closely matches their representation as full professors in elite programs (41.3%), it could be argued that both are merely a reflection of a deeper issue. Specifically, they are manifestations of a leaky pipeline in the academic system (Pell, 1996) in which the representation of women and other minorities—such as Asian Americans (Jan, 2022; Meixiong & Golden, 2021)—progressively shrinks at each stage of academic careers. This shrinkage is not simply a delayed representation at the more senior levels—the overrepresentation of female trainees in psychology and Asian American trainees in biomedical sciences, for example, has persisted for more than a decade—but reflects the common plight of minorities. Thus, far from reasons for complacency, similar levels of gender disparity in EiCs and in the rank of full professors call for attention to policy and interventions that help to patch the leaky academic pipeline.
In the context of editorship, one way of patching the gender leaky pipeline is to adopt gender-balanced shared editorship, as implemented by journals such as British Journal of Social Psychology. Indeed, compared with the regular arrangement of a single EiC, the representation of women in EBMs increases under mixed-gender shared editorship. 11
Second, given the substantial variations across journals, subdisciplines, genres, and geographical locations, policy should take such heterogeneity into consideration because different journals, subdisciplines, and regions face different degrees of gender disparities—and indeed some may have no such issues at all. Policy should therefore be flexible and adaptive, paying special attention to geographical contexts (e.g., sociocultural factors), disciplinary situations (e.g., representations of students, faculty, editors), and particulars of each journal (e.g., journal’s vision and aim, gender and global distributions of authors and editors).
Third, considering that gender disparities in editorship are intimately linked to gender disparities in authorship, reflecting differences in research productivity and seniority as well as potential biases, policy should attend to the participation of women not only as editors but also as authors and as researchers—and by extension, as students. Although overt discrimination has subdued significantly in the past few decades, pernicious covert discrimination is alive and well, threatening the well-being and sense of belonging of women and other minorities. Awareness, training, and concrete plans are necessary to combat discrimination, overt or covert. For example, organizations should consider adopting actionable antidiscrimination plans to build an inclusive, equitable, and accessible community (Ali et al., 2021).
Finally, because gender diversity and geographical diversity in EBMs may not change in tandem under female (vs. male) EiCs, policy should consider not only just the target of the intervention but also potential second-order influences, such as on other forms of diversity. Indeed, given the importance of various forms of diversity, policy and interventions should not focus on any one form of diversity in isolation at the expense of other types of diversity. For example, over the past few decades, although the representation of female faculty has increased in STEM, the representation of female color faculty has actually decreased, which may be attributed to the neglect of intersectionality such that “most existing interventions for increasing female representation in STEM academia have not been intersectional in nature” (Liu et al., 2019, p. 32). Thus, urgent attention should be paid to the intersection of various forms of diversity, including gender, race/ethnicity, and country of origin.
In considering policy implications, it is clear that much more research is needed to better understand gender disparity. In particular, the state and characteristics of gender diversity in psychology across different countries and regions are unclear, such as at the level of undergraduate students and postgraduate students, authorship, funding, employment, career advancement, and leadership positions. Existing research on gender disparities in psychology focuses primarily on the United States. It would be valuable to look beyond the United States to truly understand the global state of gender disparity in psychological science, a discipline that aims to understand all human behaviors—not just human behaviors in the United States.
Summary and Conclusion
Equality and diversity are important not just for moral reasons but also for scientific reasons. In the words of the science historian Naomi Oreskes (2019), “in diversity there is epistemic strength.” Indeed, studies have revealed that diversity is the fuel of innovation (Hofstra et al., 2020; Sulik et al., 2022). As a science of human behaviors, psychology cannot afford to devalue the participation from and study of any group of human beings. Yet despite the importance of gender diversity in psychology, the current understanding has been limited because of insufficient attention to local and broad contexts. Indeed, broad statements on the diversity in psychology (Llorens et al., 2021) fail to account for important variations across subfields, genres of scholarship, regional/cultural contexts, and gender of the leadership. Likewise, intersections of gender diversity with other forms of diversity have received little scholarly attention, with important unintended consequences—such as the increased representation of female faculty but decreased representation of female color faculty in STEM over the last few decades (Liu et al., 2019).
We focus on gender disparity in editorship in top psychology journals because editors are gatekeepers of academic currency and are relatively amenable to policy interventions. Several notable strengths in the current work—including the sampling of top journals from diverse fields, highly accurate gender coding, rich local and broad contextual analyses, perspectives of disparity and underrepresentation—allow us to characterize the local and broad contexts, leading to new conclusions and implications. The current work also offers a practical example of a methodological guideline for depicting gender diversity in other fields.
Overall, women are a minority not only as EBMs (41%) in top psychology journals but—in contrast to results based on a thin slice of journals (Gruber et al., 2021; Palser et al., 2022)—as EiCs (34%) as well. Gender disparity could be argued to indicate various degrees of female underrepresentation as manifestations of a leaky academic pipeline. Although female underrepresentation in editorship might reflect a female disadvantage in metrics on research productivity and seniority—publication counts, citations—these metrics themselves are objective only in thin disguise. That is, both overt and covert discrimination have contributed to disadvantage women and other minorities in these metrics and beyond (Gilbert et al., 2021; Hofstra et al., 2020; Rivera, 2017). These results call for policy and interventions to patch the leaky academic pipeline, including (a) addressing representations of women—and other minorities (Dupree & Kraus, 2022; Roberts et al., 2020)—as EBMs and EiCs and (b) awareness, training, and concrete antidiscrimination plans to build an inclusive and equitable community.
In pursuing policy and interventions, attention should be paid to local and broad contexts. Indeed, female ratios vary substantially across subdisciplines, genres, continents, and countries/regions—a few domains reach gender parity (e.g., EBMs in developmental psychology), but the majority have differing degrees of disparity. For example, the share of women is significantly higher in North America (42.7%) than in Europe (37.4%). Of the six major countries in psychological research, women reach parity with men in Canada (48.9%) but remain a minority in the other five major countries (United States = 42.2%; United Kingdom = 40.6%; Germany = 38.6%; the Netherlands = 41.0%; and Australia = 39.5%). Thus, a one-size-fits-all policy is unlikely to be successful. Instead, to be effective, policy should be nimble, adjusting to local contexts at the journal, subfield, and geographical levels.
Under female (vs. male) EiCs, female representation as EBMs increases, which is not due to a congregation of female EBMs in more “female-friendly” subcategories but transpires when subdisciplines, genres, and locations are controlled for. However, the increase seems specific to gender diversity given that the geographical diversity of EBMs and authorship are lower under female (vs. male) EiCs. Thus, policy and interventions should take a broad view to consider the intersection of gender diversity with other types of diversity, including race/ethnicity and country of origin.
Supplemental Material
sj-docx-1-pps-10.1177_17456916221117159 – Supplemental material for Contextualizing Gender Disparity in Editorship in Psychological Science
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-pps-10.1177_17456916221117159 for Contextualizing Gender Disparity in Editorship in Psychological Science by Zhicheng Lin and Ningxi Li in Perspectives on Psychological Science
Footnotes
Appendix
Tope 68 Psychology Journals Based on Journal Impact Factors (Journal Citation Reports 2020 Edition)
| Journal | Category | Type | JIF | Country or region |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Psychological Bulletin | SCIE, multidisciplinary | R | 20.8 | US |
| Annual Review of Psychology | SCIE, multidisciplinary | R | 18.1 | US |
| Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics | SCIE | E | 14.9 | Switzerland |
| Annual Review of Clinical Psychology | SCIE, clinical | R | 13.7 | US |
| Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry | SCIE, developmental | E | 7.0 | UK |
| Psychological Review | SCIE, multidisciplinary | R | 6.8 | US |
| Psychological Medicine | SCIE, clinical | E | 5.8 | UK |
| Depression and Anxiety | SCIE, clinical | E | 4.7 | US |
| Journal of Memory and Language | SCIE, experimental | E | 3.9 | US |
| International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology | Applied | R | 14.3 | UK |
| Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior | Applied | R | 10.8 | US |
| Journal of Management | Applied | E | 8.9 | US |
| Journal of Occupational Health Psychology | Applied | E | 7.3 | US |
| Leadership Quarterly | Applied | E | 6.6 | US |
| Personnel Psychology | Applied | E | 6.6 | US |
| Journal of Applied Psychology | Applied | E | 5.8 | US |
| Organizational Research Methods | Applied | M | 5.7 | US |
| Journal of Organizational Behavior | Applied | E | 5.0 | US |
| Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Biological | R | 17.3 | UK |
| Psychophysiology | Biological | E | 3.7 | US |
| Clinical Psychology Review | Clinical | R | 10.3 | UK |
| Journal of Abnormal Psychology | Clinical | E | 6.5 | US |
| Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice | Clinical | R | 5.5 | US |
| Clinical Psychological Science | Clinical | E | 5.4 | US |
| Health Psychology Review | Clinical | R | 5.1 | Europe |
| Neuropsychology Review | Clinical | R | 4.8 | US |
| Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology | Clinical | E | 4.6 | US |
| Behaviour Research and Therapy | Clinical | E | 4.5 | UK |
| Cognitive Behaviour Therapy | Clinical | E | 4.4 | Sweden |
| International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology | Clinical | E | 4.3 | Spain |
| Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry | Developmental | E | 6.9 | US |
| Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience | Developmental | E | 5.0 | US |
| Child Development | Developmental, educational | E | 4.9 | US |
| Child Development Perspectives | Developmental | R | 4.6 | US |
| Autism | Developmental | E | 4.6 | UK |
| Journal of Adolescent Health | Developmental | E | 4.0 | US |
| European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry | Developmental | E | 3.9 | Europe |
| Educational Psychology Review | Educational | R | 5.2 | US |
| Journal of Educational Psychology | Educational | E | 5.0 | US |
| Educational Psychologist | Educational | R | 4.5 | US |
| Journal of Counseling Psychology | Educational | E | 3.7 | US |
| Journal of the Learning Sciences | Educational | E | 3.6 | US |
| Trends in Cognitive Sciences | Experimental | R | 15.2 | US |
| Advances in Experimental Social Psychology | Experimental, social | R | 6.6 | US |
| Computers in Human Behavior | Experimental, multidisciplinary | E | 5.0 | UK |
| Behavior Research Methods | Experimental, mathematical | M | 4.4 | US |
| Cortex | Experimental | E | 4.0 | Italy |
| Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences | Experimental | R | 4.0 | Netherlands |
| Psychonomic Bulletin & Review | Experimental, mathematical | E | 3.9 | US |
| Developmental Science | Experimental | E | 3.7 | UK |
| Psychological Science in the Public Interest | Multidisciplinary | R | 18.3 | US |
| Psychological Inquiry | Multidisciplinary | R | 9.9 | UK |
| Psychological Methods | Multidisciplinary | M | 8.4 | US |
| Perspectives on Psychological Science | Multidisciplinary | R | 8.3 | US |
| American Psychologist | Multidisciplinary | E | 6.5 | US |
| Psychological Science | Multidisciplinary | E | 5.4 | US |
| Environment and Behavior | Multidisciplinary | E | 5.1 | US |
| Current Directions in Psychological Science | Multidisciplinary | R | 5.1 | US |
| European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context | Multidisciplinary | E | 4.9 | Spain |
| Annals of Behavioral Medicine | Multidisciplinary | E | 4.5 | US |
| Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association | Psychoanalysis | E | 1.0 | US |
| Psychoanalytic Psychology | Psychoanalysis | E | 1.0 | US |
| Personality and Social Psychology Review | Social | R | 12.3 | US |
| Social Issues and Policy Review | Social | R | 8.9 | US |
| Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | Social | E | 6.3 | US |
| Social Psychological and Personality Science | Social | E | 4.4 | US |
| European Journal of Personality | Social | E | 3.9 | Europe |
| Journal of Personality | Social | E | 3.7 | US |
Note: Journal categories are based on Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE; one category) and the Social Sciences Citation Index (10 categories). Journal types are based on being outlets primarily for review articles (R), empirical articles (E), or method articles (M). The country or region of each journal is the original country/region of origin of the owning academic society (societies) or publisher (if it is not owned by any academic society). Some academic societies (e.g., European Association of Personality Psychology, European Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and European Health Psychology Society) have no clear country of origin and are coded based on the region (“Europe”). JIF = journal impact factor; US = United States; UK = United Kingdom.
Acknowledgements
We thank Yuxi Chen, Keyi Shi, Haifei Wang, Jingrui Wang, and Shuhan Zhang for their assistance in coding faculty information.
Transparency
Action Editor: Klaus Fiedler
Editor: Klaus Fiedler
Author Contributions
Z. Lin designed the study. N. Li collected and analyzed the data under the guidance of Z. Lin. Z. Lin wrote the manuscript. Both of the authors approved the final manuscript for submission.
Notes
References
Supplementary Material
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