Gender differences in how scientists present the importance of their research

with invited speaker Marc J. Lerchenmueller, Assistant Professor for Technological Innovation and Management Science at the University of Mannheim, Germany, and a Research Fellow at the Yale School of Management, USA

There will be approximately 30 minutes for Q&A.

More about the seminar

Anecdotes suggest that women may receive less recognition than men for equivalent accomplishments. Just how much and why they receive less attention has been difficult to show. We use natural language processing on scientific texts from over 6 million publications to examine whether women and men differ in the degree to which they promote – or spin – their accomplishments by using positive adjectives, like excellent or novel. We identify significant gender differences in the use of such self-promoting language. We further identify 70 million citations to the focal publications that show women’s more timid use of language reduces the attention their work receives. These findings possibly offer new routes to narrowing gender gaps in science and beyond.

More about the speaker Marc J. Lerchenmueller
I am an Assistant Professor for Technological Innovation and Management Science at the University of Mannheim, Germany, and a Research Fellow at the Yale School of Management, USA.

My primary stream of research pertains to the economics of innovation and entrepreneurship. My second stream of research concerns technology and science policy, especially issues related to the gender gap in science and issues in the translation of scientific discoveries into commercial applications.

Before becoming an academic, I worked for the Boston Consulting Group in New York and co-founded two biotechnology companies, one successfully exited and one ongoing. I earned my doctorate at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, and I hold Master degrees in Public Health from Yale and Financial Economics from Oxford.