Male academics may be more likely to place importance on how quickly a PhD candidate could complete their degree when assessing candidates¡¯ potential, a study has suggested.

The research looked at scores given to almost 2,000 applicants to a humanities and social science PhD scholarship scheme in Canada and compared this with how quickly they finished their doctorate and whether they went on to a job in academia.

, published in Scientometrics, male evaluators on the committees assessing applications for Social Science and Humanities Research Council scholarships gave a higher score to candidates who ended up completing their PhD within five years compared with female assessors.

The article by Vincent Chandler, a researcher in the department of industrial relations at the Universit¨¦ du Qu¨¦bec en Outaouais, says that the results ¡°clearly indicate that male evaluators are rewarding candidates who can credibly demonstrate their capacity to complete their degree quickly¡±.

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¡°Female evaluators may not perceive this information in the same way as male evaluators do or they may not find this outcome as relevant as male evaluators do,¡± Dr Chandler says in the paper.

Dr Chandler adds that ¡°it would be interesting to understand the reasons behind the results¡±, such as whether ¡°male and female evaluators have a different definition of success¡±.

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He says that any organisation selecting people to sit on such assessment committees ¡°should be aware that their gender affects their perception of candidates¡±.

¡°Male evaluators seem to give more importance than female evaluators to short-term outcomes or they are better able to distinguish candidates who have the potential to finish their doctoral studies quickly,¡± he says.

¡°Increasing the number of female evaluators on evaluation committees as a result of gender quotas could therefore put more emphasis on long-term outcomes and less on quick programme completion.¡±

However, the study found no evidence that the gender of the evaluators made any difference to whether their scores predicted which candidates went on academic roles.

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Overall, a higher score given to the PhD candidates was associated with an increased probability that they went on to a tenure-track academic position. But male evaluators were not more likely to give higher scores to those who went on to secure a job in academia compared with their female counterparts.

simon.baker@timeshighereducation.com