Merit, competition and gender: scientific promotion in public research organisations

Promotion is a key reward in academic science normatively associated with performance. Women are underrepresented in science across most countries, particularly in senior roles. Our study investigates the role of merit and several other factors in the promotion to full professor and senior researcher in public scientific institutes, and whether differences between women and men exist. We analyse 90 different promotion events at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) from 2017 to 2021 across scientific fields, including 2338 applicants and 397 members of evaluation committees. We have created two different data sets; one of applicants, combining individual and career information with scientific performance data (publications, citations, impact, projects, contracts, patents, and PhD supervision) and another one of evaluation panels members. We have integrated the two data sets for each evaluation panel and determined the competitive conditions of every promotion event. Using logistic regression models and estimating predicted probabilities, we address the role of merit in promotion, the effect of competition and panel composition and weather gender plays a significant role, including potential gender differences. Our findings show that performance does matter and gender is not relevant to explain individual promotion outcomes. Evidence shows that female and male applicants possess comparable merits. Scientific achievements (especially leadership in project funding and citation impact) are important predictors of promotion probabilities across genders. Most importantly, we do not find evidence that men and women with similar performance have different promotion probabilities. Our findings reveal additional influential elements beyond scientific performance. Specifically, institutional proximity or connections between applicants and evaluators is an important factor, in addition to the effects of competitive pressure within each promotion event, however those effects are not gendered. Some of our results raise concerns about the fairness of the promotion process. We discuss the findings and some organisational policy implications.