The unequal dividend: gender differences in early-career researchers’ performance gains from international mobility

Abstract While it is well recognized that more men than women move abroad for research jobs, it remains unclear if both genders derive similar benefits from such moves. We traced the mobility trajectories of a global sample of 15,817 early-career researchers over approximately 10 years to quantify gender variations in their returns to mobility. Employing an event study design, with and without gender-based matching on origin countries, destination countries and research disciplines, we found the relative performance gains from mobility to be lower for women than for men in terms of publication output and top-journal articles, while differences in citations and changing collaboration activities were inconclusive. To verify that this widening performance gap reflected an unequal mobility dividend rather than broader disparities emerging throughout careers, we also employed a placebo falsification check comparing the trajectories of male and female movers and stayers. In conjunction with previous work on gender and international mobility, our findings suggest that women in global science encounter a double disadvantage: they are less likely to pursue international relocation and reap the associated benefits as documented in previous research, and when they move their relative performance improvements are less substantial.