The gender gap in the early progression of academic careers: evidence from Italy

• Date: 02 January 2025
• Pages: 1-20
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-01-2024-0030
• Published date: 02 January 2025
• Subject Matter: Economics,Labour economics
• Author: Vincenzo Alfano,Lorenzo Cicatiello,Giuseppe Lucio Gaeta,Mauro Pinto

The gender gap in the early

progression of academic careers:

evidence from Italy

Vincenzo Alfano

DISEGIM, UniParthenope, Napoli, Italy

Lorenzo Cicatiello and Giuseppe Lucio Gaeta

Department of Human and Social Sciences, UNIOR, Napoli, Italy, and

Mauro Pinto

Department of Political Science, University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli,

Capua, Italy

Abstract

Purpose –This paper contributes to the existing literature on the gender gap in academic career advancement by

focusing on the very early stage of the academic career, i.e. the transition from Ph.D. completion to a tenured

position.

Design/methodology/approach –Using Italian individual-level data, our econometric analyses estimate the

likelihood of holding a tenured position conditional on a set of individual-level covariates.

Findings –Our findings support the idea that women have a lower probability of obtaining a tenured position.

Results hold even when research productivity and experience are controlled for.

Originality/value –Our conclusions suggest that there is a significant gender gap in progression through an

academic career.

Keywords Gender gap, Academic career, PhD holders

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

In recent years, European countries have taken strides towards achieving gender parity in

university education. Despite persisting disparities in certain fields, particularly STEM, the

incidence of tertiary graduates among women has surpassed that among men (OECD, 2020),

and gender parity has nearly been achieved among doctoral degree holders (European

Commission, 2021).

Although significant progress in gender equality, women remain underrepresented among

university staff. In 2018, women comprised just over 40% of all academic staff (European

Commission, 2021). However, similarly to private sector trends (McKinsey & Companies,

2023), their representation diminishes at higher hierarchical levels, constituting approximately

46.6% of grade C staff, 40.0% of grade B, and a mere 26.2% of grade A (Full professor) staff

(European Commission, 2021). These statistics underscore the substantial underrepresentation

of women in top academic positions, revealing a persistent gender gap (Bagilhole and White,

2011;Currie et al., 2002;Alfano et al., 2021a).

Though an examination of biased selection in the early stages of academic researchers’

careers – the so-called “broken rung” (McKinsey & Companies, 2023) – may help to explain

International

Journal of

Manpower

1

JEL Classification — I23; J16; J71

© Vincenzo Alfano, Lorenzo Cicatiello, Giuseppe Lucio Gaeta and Mauro Pinto. Published by

Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for

both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and

authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/

legalcode

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/0143-7720.htm

Received 13 January 2024

Revised 27 June 2024

9 October 2024

Accepted 9 December 2024

InternationalJournal of Manpower

Vol.46 No. 10, 2025

pp.1-20

EmeraldPublishing Limited

e-ISSN:1758-6577

p-ISSN:0143-7720

DOI10.1108/IJM-01-2024-0030

later disparities, the relevant literature is scarce. Gaughan and Robin (2004) find no specific

advantages for men in obtaining permanent positions for post-doctorates in Life Sciences in

the US and France. Picardi (2019) finds a gender-based glass door in Italian academia.

We contribute to this discourse with an econometric analysis of Italian cross-sectional

microdata, investigating whether a gender gap in career advancement exists among recent

PhD graduates early in their academic careers. Italy is a valuable case study for examining

gender disparities in academia. While women constitute nearly half of PhDs, their

representation drastically declines in higher academic ranks, dwindling to 22.2% among

Grade A personnel. Studies attribute this partially to underinvestment in Italian higher

education (Gaiaschi and Musumeci, 2020). Analyses by Filandri and Pasqua (2021),De

Paola and Scoppa (2015) and De Paola et al. (2017) reveal substantial gender gaps in career

progression, especially when evaluation committees comprise solely male members.

However, these studies focus on existing university staff rather than PhD holders seeking

academic roles. Our investigation fills this gap by providing evidence about gender

disparities in Italian Universities. Part of the existing research on gender differences in

academia suggests that it stems from disparities in performance and work experience,

arguing that male academics outperform female colleagues in terms of the quantity (and

impact) of research and working experience. See for instance Abramo et al. (2021),Van

Arensbergen et al. (2012),Symonds et al. (2006). Of course, this productivity and

experience gap is itself a puzzle (Cole and Zuckerman, 1984): on the one side it may be

linked to multiple factors, such as voluntary self-selection into parenthood and forced

social selection into domestic labour and childcare (see Squazzoni et al., 2021); on the

other, it may be affected by gender bias in editorial boards of scientific journals (Pautasso,

2015) and may be more pronounced in some scientific fields (Ginther and Kahn, 2004).

The literature does not unanimously identify differences in research productivity and work

experience as the main drivers of the career advancement gap. Van den Besselaar and

Sandstrom (2016) note gender differences in academic careers even when accounting for

productivity differentials. Discovering that women advance less in their academic careers than

men, despite having the same level of scientific productivity and work experience, suggests the

presence of a gender gap beyond that explained by productivity and experience alone.

In line with this view, we test whether a gender gap in academic career progression exists

among Italian PhD holders in their early careers, even after controlling for research

productivity and working experience. By doing so, we contribute to the understanding of

gender disparities in academia, even though we cannot provide a conclusive explanation for

the underlying reasons behind the observed gap. More specifically, our study checks whether

the “productivity” and “experience” hypotheses explain the gap. We achieve this by utilizing

Italian microdata on PhD holders who completed their doctoral studies a few years prior to the

interview. Our analysis employs two-step Heckman regressions that account for respondents’

self-selection into academia and identify correlates of career progression towards tenured

positions. Our findings indicate that experience and research productivity significantly

contribute to securing a tenured position, which is encouraging as it signals meritocracy.

Contrary to the productivity and experience hypotheses described above, when we control for

these factors, women still face a substantially lower probability of obtaining a tenured

academic position. This suggests that gender disparities in research productivity and years of

experience do not fully explain the gaps in career advancement.

Beyond this main finding, we also demonstrate that the positive correlation between

experience and research productivity with the probability of obtaining tenure is more

pronounced for men than for women, indicating that experience and productivity are more

highly valued for men.

The rest of this study is structured thus: section two delineates the Italian academic

recruitment process; section three introduces the data and methodology employed in the

econometric analyses; section four presents our analytical findings, while section five

concludes.

IJM

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