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Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines

Overview of attention for article published in Science, January 2015
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  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (99th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (99th percentile)

Citations

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939 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
620 Mendeley
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6 CiteULike
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Title
Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines
Published in
Science, January 2015
DOI 10.1126/science.1261375
Pubmed ID
Authors

Sarah-Jane Leslie, Andrei Cimpian, Meredith Meyer, Edward Freeland

Abstract

The gender imbalance in STEM subjects dominates current debates about women's underrepresentation in academia. However, women are well represented at the Ph.D. level in some sciences and poorly represented in some humanities (e.g., in 2011, 54% of U.S. Ph.D.'s in molecular biology were women versus only 31% in philosophy). We hypothesize that, across the academic spectrum, women are underrepresented in fields whose practitioners believe that raw, innate talent is the main requirement for success, because women are stereotyped as not possessing such talent. This hypothesis extends to African Americans' underrepresentation as well, as this group is subject to similar stereotypes. Results from a nationwide survey of academics support our hypothesis (termed the field-specific ability beliefs hypothesis) over three competing hypotheses.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 801 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 620 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 9 1%
United Kingdom 5 <1%
Canada 3 <1%
Belgium 2 <1%
Spain 2 <1%
Switzerland 1 <1%
France 1 <1%
Czechia 1 <1%
Germany 1 <1%
Other 0 0%
Unknown 595 96%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 142 23%
Researcher 73 12%
Student > Master 54 9%
Student > Bachelor 53 9%
Student > Doctoral Student 38 6%
Other 117 19%
Unknown 143 23%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 99 16%
Social Sciences 83 13%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 57 9%
Physics and Astronomy 33 5%
Computer Science 22 4%
Other 164 26%
Unknown 162 26%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 2225. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 15 March 2024.
All research outputs
#3,862
of 25,750,437 outputs
Outputs from Science
#203
of 83,295 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#26
of 362,100 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Science
#4
of 1,122 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,750,437 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 83,295 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 66.0. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 362,100 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 1,122 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.