The Plight of Women in Finance Journals

Abstract

This paper examines the plight of women as authors and editors in academic finance journals. Based on a hand-collected cross-sectional sample of 37 journals, we investigate if women publish or act as editorial board members for academic finance journals commensurate with their size in the workforce. Also, we examine the editorial board and authorship compositions to investigate any evident gender bias. Authorship and editorship for women in finance journals are short of expectations. High-ranked journals, rather than top or low, appear to best support females in editorial roles. Journal editors publish more papers than non-editors. Finally, we find gender bias in editorial boards at the associate editor and co-editor levels, but not with chief editors. This bias impacts the number of papers published by female and male authors.

Keywords: Women, Finance journals, Gender, journal author, journal editor

JEL Classification: G00