Research: How Women Undersell Their Work

Many factors contribute to the gender disparities in academia. Productivity differences, however, cannot account for them. Instead, research suggests that women receive less recognition than men for equivalent accomplishments. Just why they receive less attention has been an open question. A new study focusing on the life sciences examined whether women and men differ in the degree to which they promote – or spin – their accomplishments by using positive terms like “novel,” “unique,” or “unprecedented” when describing their research. Researchers document that women use fewer of these positive adjectives in research articles. These differences in presentation, in turn, appear to influence the amount of attention that their articles receive.