To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Which indicates that with these works, attaching a specific female label to them was detrimental to their acceptance. Do we also have any comments from the reviewers as to why they thought the work was not so valuable, when it came with that label?

I'm just wondering what the process that happened inside reviewers' heads were. What the hell could they be thinking? If the work is the same, then a purely objective process ought to have given them the same exposure. As that wasn't the case, I'd love to hear some analysis for why the female name affected them as it did.

The following tests to the result should also be checked:

The study had to be competently enough carried: for instance, I hope the publishers for which the work was submitted under male name were chosen in random, experiment repeated with different papers to reduce effects of chance, the signal clearly visible (for instance, very different percentages for accepting the work could be established) etc.

There's also the other problem that scientific publishing is generally highly conservative. For instance, if there is some tarnishment of reputation such as previous fringe research, association to kooky theories, etc. reviewers might be skeptical because of the *name* itself. (Since this is mathematics, I'm not sure if fringe/kooky research really exists. I guess working with unproved assumptions might get you such an impression, or something.)

For best results, each probe work should be published under two random names, which are by database searches not associated to any previous work, to rule out reviewers confusing the author for someone else. A positive result would prove that fresh female mathematicians face additional hurdles not encountered by their male colleagues; their work would seem to be measured by some harsher criteria.