Mind the Gap: Gender Differences in Citations among Mexican Scholars

Objective: To quantify gender gaps in scholarly impact within Mexico's National System of Researchers (SNI). Methodology: A Scopus-based dataset of 2,089 active SNI researchers in Economics, Engineering, and Health Sciences for 2021 was assembled, and an Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition of log citations was applied. The outcome variable and right-tailed covariates were winsorized at the 99th percentile within each discipline to reduce the influence of extreme values, and all variables were transformed as log(x+1) to retain zero-valued observations. The study used a cross-sectional observational design and was restricted to SNI researchers identifiable in Scopus; a Heckman selection-corrected specification is reported in the Appendix. Findings: Women received approximately 23% fewer citations in Economics and 21% fewer in Health Sciences; in both disciplines, more than 100% of the observed gap was explained by differences in endowments, mainly fewer publications and shorter academic careers. In Engineering, the citation gap was not statistically significant; women exhibited lower endowments but higher returns to observable characteristics. Implications: The findings suggest that narrowing the citation gap requires strengthening research opportunities and career permanence rather than focusing on citation dynamics. Originality: This study provides the first discipline-specific Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition of the gender citation gap among SNI researchers and distinguishes between differences in citation outcomes and differences associated with academic trajectories.