Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Gender differences in scientific writing styles
Impact of writing style on citation bias
Linguistic features affecting gender gaps in science
Investigating writing style as a contributor to gender gaps in science and technology
🤖 AI Summary
This study investigates whether author gender induces linguistic style differences in scientific texts and exacerbates gender bias in academic evaluation. Methodologically, it employs a dual-dimensional framework—informationality (fact-oriented) versus involvement (relationship-oriented)—to conduct computational linguistic analyses on large-scale scholarly articles and patents. Gender labels are assigned via name-database cross-verification, followed by statistical modeling and regression analysis. The study makes three key contributions: first, it provides the first systematic evidence that female authors significantly favor involvement-oriented language; second, it identifies a gendered citation pattern wherein highly involved texts are disproportionately cited by female researchers; and third, it challenges the assumption of linguistic neutrality in scientific writing, offering novel linguistic evidence and analytical pathways for understanding structural biases in scholarly recognition.
📝 Abstract
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.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Analyze gender differences in writing styles
Use informational and involved linguistic features
Link writing styles to citation patterns
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