Gender Composition of Editors and Editorial Boards in Seven Top Criminal Justice and Criminology Journals from 1985 to 2017

Abstract

This paper examines the gender composition of editors and editorial board members of seven top criminal justice and criminology (CCJ) journals from 1985 through 2017. The findings indicate that women have historically been, and continue to be, underrepresented in these positions. From 1985 through 2017, women comprised 14% of all Editors-in-Chief, 27% of all Associate Editors, and 22% of all Editorial Board members. While there was a period during the early 2000s when Justice Quarterly and Criminology achieved gender parity in representation across all of the editorial roles, this equality was short lived. The other journals have never achieved gender parity, and, on average, women have comprised 3.8% to 35.2% of the editorial positions at each of the journals. The implications of this imbalance for women’s scholarship and professional success are discussed, and recommendations for changes to CCJ journal policies and practices to ensure more equity are provided.

Keywords:

• Gender
• publishing
• editors
• editorial boards

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Emilio Bruna, one of the Principal Investigators of the Gatekeeper Project, for encouraging us to pursue this project and for the advice and technical assistance he provided, as well as Melanie Davis of UF Interlibrary Loan, L. Edward Day, Kathryn Farr, Diane Irwin, Badi Hasisi, Jaclyn Keen, Marvin Krohn, Jodi Lane, Michael Lynch, Elizabeth Cass, Michael Maxfield, Jean McGloin, Albert Record, Emily Salisbury, Cassia Spohn, Paul L. Taylor, David Weisburd, and Michael Wolfowicz for their assistance in collecting the necessary print issues and clarifying the various editorial roles.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Although the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology has been included in some productivity studies, we did not include it in this study because its content (focusing primarily on issue related to law) and editorial process (which is primarily managed by students) differs significantly from the others.

2 A major obstacle to data collection was that university libraries rarely have print copies of recently published journals, and electronic versions of the journals often do not include the front matter. When print copies could not be obtained at the authors’ institution, they had to be obtained via interlibrary loan and sometimes by soliciting volumes from the current and former editors of these journals (see the acknowledgements).

3 This method was used to code the gender for every person included in the analysis, except for Seth Callaman who served as an Editorial Board Member at CJB from 1996 until 1997. Callaman was coded as a man, according to typically gendered naming conventions because we could not find any other information on this editorial board member.

4 This category also included those listed as Executive Editorial Board Members, Editorial Advisory Board Members, and other similar titles.

5 Special issue editors were excluded because the sampling frame was designed to include only those who were responsible for issues throughout the year, as opposed to those who were responsible for editing a single issue.

6 In some cases, it could be inferred that past editors were on the Editorial Board. For example, in recent years, the Journal of Quantitative Criminology has denoted past editors with an asterisk to indicate that they were Editorial Board members. However, earlier issues listed these same individuals as past Editors but did not include any indication that they were Editorial Board members. To be consistent, we coded them as Editorial Board members during the earlier years.

7 There were three women assistant editors throughout Dr. Gibbon’s tenure, but, according to personal correspondence, their roles were generally limited and mostly involved administrative duties.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Clayton Cory Lowe

Clayton Cory Lowe is a PhD student and Graduate School Fellow at the University of Florida in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law. He received his M.A. in the Social Sciences from Georgia Southern University in 2015. His research interests include risk and protective factors for crime, delinquency, and substance use; communities, crime, and fear of crime; criminological theory; and juvenile delinquency and prevention.

Abigail A. Fagan

Abigail A. Fagan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law at the University of Florida. Her research focuses on risk and protective factors related to juvenile delinquency and substance use, particularly family and community influences, the relationship between victimization and offending, and gender differences in offending. She also studies issues related to the identification, implementation, and dissemination of effective delinquency and crime prevention strategies.