The Myth of Meritocracy and the Matilda Effect in STEM: Paper Acceptance and Paper Citation

Abstract: Biases against women in the workplace have been documented in various studies. There is also a growing body of literature on biases within academia. But particularly in STEM, due to the heavily male-dominated field, studies suggest that if one's gender is identifiable, women are more likely to get their papers rejected and not cited as often as men. We propose two simple modifications to tackle gender bias in STEM that can be applied to (but not only) IEEE conferences and journals. Regarding paper acceptance, we propose a double-blind review, and regarding paper citation, we propose one single letter to identify the authors' first names, followed by their family names. We also propose other modifications regarding gender bias in STEM and academia and encourage further reforms supported by current research on this topic with gender-segregated data.