Effects of reviewers' gender on assessments of a gender-related standardized manuscript.

Background: Several factors including reviewers' gender can influence the assessment of submitted manuscripts.

Purpose: This study was designed to investigate the effects of reviewers' gender on the assessment of a gender-related study.

Method: One hundred reviewers (50 women) were randomly selected from Academic Medicine's reviewer pool. Two versions of an empirical study of medical students in which women forecast a lower professional income than men were prepared, and each version was randomly assigned to 25 men and 25 women reviewers. The two versions were identical except for one sentence in the abstract and two sentences in the conclusion. Version 1 attributed the lower forecast income of women to intrinsic gender factors (e.g., lower financial incentives). Version 2 attributed the difference to extrinsic social learning factors (e.g., socialization bias).

Results: Results showed no significant gender difference in reviewers' evaluations of the two manuscript versions.

Conclusion: Although no evidence of reviewers' gender bias was found in this study, alternative explanations of the findings suggest that further empirical research is needed.