A Career-History Analysis of Gender Differences in Publication Productivity among South African Academics

Abstract

Decades of research on gender differences in academic publication productivity has as yet provided very little, if any, empirical support for the common sense understanding that a certain measure of incompatibility exists between being a mother and a productive academic researcher. In an attempt to start unravelling the complexity of this productivity puzzle in the South African context, data collected from Curriculum Vitae (CVs) are integrated with qualitative interview data. This methodological approach provides a detailed view of publication patterns, couched within the context of an in-depth perspective on the career histories of sixteen of the country’s top-performing academics. The study identifi es important ways in which women and men approach their early academic and family lives differently, with divergent consequences for their career publication productivity.