Who Receives Scientific Deference? Gender and the Public Construction of Social Scientists

Abstract

Drawing on feminist metascience and Ridgeway’s “framed by gender” theory, I ask: How are men and women social scientists constructed in public media? I conduct a comparative analysis of media portrayals of eight public sociologists (four women–men pairs): Arlie Hochschild–Barry Glassner, Juliet Schor–Richard Florida, Angela Duckworth–Daniel Kahneman, and Michelle Alexander–William Julius Wilson. Findings reveal that women’s work is frequently de-legitimized by trivializing their contributions and emphasizing political biases, whereas men’s work is framed as empirical, rigorous, and legitimate, even when flawed. Women are often denied what I call “scientific deference” á la Goffman. These asymmetries underscore that scientific meritocracy and objectivity are not intrinsic properties of science but are instead culturally constructed ideals. By demonstrating how media narratives reflect and sustain gendered hierarchies of epistemic authority, this study extends feminist critiques of science beyond STEM and highlights the role of public discourse in shaping who counts as a legitimate scientist.

Plain Language Summary

Who Gets Credited as Scientific Experts? Gender and Public Media

This study examines how public media portrays men and women social scientists and how those portrayals shape who is taken seriously as a scientific authority. Analyzing media coverage of eight well-known social scientists—organized into four women–men pairs—I show that women’s ideas are more often treated as political, personal, or biased, while men’s ideas are framed as objective, rigorous, and credible, even when their work has clear limitations. As a result, women are less likely to receive what I call scientific deference: being treated as legitimate producers of scientific knowledge. These patterns suggest that claims of scientific objectivity and meritocracy are not neutral but are shaped by cultural ideas about gender. By focusing on public media rather than scientific institutions alone, this study shows how gendered inequalities in scientific authority are reproduced through everyday public discourse, and how these processes extend beyond STEM fields to the social sciences.