Gender Inequality and Knowledge Production in Criminology and Criminal Justice

Studies show that co-authorship of scholarly articles in criminology and criminal justice journals are stratified by gender: males are more likely to publish with males, females are more likely to publish with males. Increasing co-authorship has led some to claim that the intellectual contributions of females may be devalued, systematically putting them at a disadvantage for tenure and promotion decisions. Despite the importance of understanding gender inequality in knowledge production, no studies have examined the mechanisms that produce this outcome. Using data from 656 publications in five journals, we examine the structure of gender and co-authorship by testing two mechanisms that may generate a gendered distribution among scholarly articles. Although females exhibit a greater proclivity toward co-authorship with males, we show that this is a consequence of higher productivity among males. The tendency for males to have higher productivity than females in publications actually increases the likelihood of cross-gender collaboration.