The Research Productivity of Scientists: How Gender, Organization Culture, and the Problem Choice Process Influence the Productivity of Scientists

For over forty years, social scientists have noted and puzzled over the 'gender gap' in publication rates of academic scientists. In this study, the author, Robert L. Fisher, argues that men and women scientists differ in their 'problem choice process' and that this difference may be behind much of the difference in publication rates. Fisher draws on a large literature review, including much unpublished European research, and a detailed survey of 107 scientists from numerous disciplines that he carried out in the late 1990s in both the United States and Canada, to support his thesis.