Investigating writing style as a contributor to gender gaps in science and technology
This addresses bias in scientific evaluation, potentially affecting gender equity in STEM fields, but is incremental as it builds on existing research about gender differences.
The study investigated whether gender differences in writing style contribute to gender gaps in science and technology, finding that women use more involved features in academic papers and patents, which are cited more by women.
A growing stream of research finds that scientific contributions are evaluated differently depending on the gender of the author. In this article, we consider whether gender differences in writing styles - how men and women communicate their work - may contribute to these observed gender gaps. We ground our investigation in a framework for characterizing the linguistic style of written text, with two sets of features - informational (i.e., features that emphasize facts) and involved (i.e., features that emphasize relationships). Using a large sample of academic papers and patents, we find significant differences in writing style by gender, with women using more involved features in their writing. Papers and patents with more involved features also tend to be cited more by women. Our findings suggest that scientific text is not devoid of personal character, which could contribute to bias in evaluation, thereby compromising the norm of universalism as a foundational principle of science.