Descriptive statistics.

Gender inequality in the sciences remains a persistent issue. Women are often unable to participate in the scientific process as easily as men. When they do, this is largely constricted to opportunities at the lower rather than higher ranks of academia. This gap not only sets back female scientists but also scientific and social progress, more generally. The objective of this study is to look at a prominent national program for researchers in Mexico – Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (SNI) – to assess additional productivity and promotion heterogeneity by gender across career trajectories and disciplinary boundaries. Tracing productivity and promotion activity for 18,799 researchers active in the SNI program from 1991 to 2011, the analysis uncovers the following: while female researchers are associated with more productivity than males at each stage of the program, they are less likely to attain higher levels of promotion as they progress through their career. Illustratively, our more conservative results indicate women are associated with 1.2 more publications than men the year prior to promotion to Level 2 from Level 1 in SNI. Yet, 13 percent of women are associated with Level 2 promotion compared to 22 percent of men. To contextualize our understanding of these patterns, we interviewed SNI participants and include empirical assessments to unpack what may explain these perplexing results. While significant female representation in the applicant pool is needed to improve the gender gap, only a marginal increase in the gender representation of the reviewer pool is needed to reduce it significantly. This result points to a novel underexplored mechanism to inform future studies and policy – that of evaluative salience. While this does not fully address gender bias in the sciences, a shift in salience from applicants to reviewers may be an important precursor to address more structural ills around gender inequality.

科学界的性别不平等仍是持续存在的顽疾。女性往往难以像男性一样顺畅参与科研进程，即便能够参与，其职业发展机会也大多被局限于学术体系的中低层，而非高层梯队。这一差距不仅会拖累女性科研工作者的个人发展，更会整体阻碍科学与社会的进步。本研究的目标是聚焦墨西哥一项针对科研人员的国家级重点项目——墨西哥国家研究员系统（Sistema Nacional de Investigadores, SNI），以此考察不同职业轨迹与学科边界下，性别所引发的学术产出异质性与晋升异质性。我们追踪了1991年至2011年间共计18799名活跃于该项目的科研人员的学术产出与晋升动态，得出以下结论：尽管在该项目的各个阶段，女性科研人员的学术产出水平均高于男性，但随着职业发展，女性获得更高层级晋升的概率却低于男性。举例而言，我们更为保守的分析结果显示，在从SNI一级晋升至二级的前一年，女性科研人员的论文发表量较男性多出1.2篇；然而，仅有13%的女性能够晋升至二级，而男性的这一比例达到了22%。为了更全面地理解这些现象背后的成因，我们访谈了SNI的参与者，并通过实证分析来拆解这些令人困惑的结果背后的潜在机制。研究发现，若要改善性别差距，需要大幅提升申请者群体中的女性占比；但仅需小幅增加评审者群体中的女性占比，就能显著缩小这一差距。这一发现指向了一个尚未被充分探索的新颖机制——评审显著性（evaluative salience），可为未来的研究与政策制定提供参考。尽管这无法完全解决科学界的性别偏见问题，但将评审的核心关注点从申请者群体转向评审者群体，或许是解决性别不平等这一结构性弊病的重要前置步骤。