A0658
Title: Pink queue and double standard: A new assessment of the gender gap in the Italian academia
Authors: Marianna Brunetti - University of Rome Tor Vergata (Italy) [presenting]
Annalisa Fabretti - University of Rome Tor Vergata (Italy)
Mariangela Zoli - University of Rome Tor Vergata (Italy)
Abstract: The purpose is to study the gap in career progression in Italian academia based on a discrete-time Markov chain, which has been largely used in demography and the labor market, but never to assess potential gaps in career progressions in the university system. The probability of achieving different academic positions is estimated starting from entry-level roles, and the average time required for career advancement (i.e., promotion to a higher role), and to assess potential gaps in these metrics, the chain is applied on the subset of male and female professors, controlling for influential factors such as productivity, generation, and academic age, where several findings are reported. First, the gap in the probability of career advancement is marked over a 10-year horizon and is only partially absorbed over a 40-year full-career horizon. Second, female scholars wait up to 3 years longer than their male scientific counterparts. This phenomenon is labeled as "pink queue". Last, scholars are classified based on the quartile of the distribution they belong to in terms of h-index, and it is found that the likelihood of becoming a full professor for females in the top (third) quartile of the h-index distribution is in line with the same chances estimated for males in the third (second) quartile of the distribution. This result is labeled as "double standard" as it seems to suggest that women must achieve higher standards with respect to males in order to get to the same career level.
