Does Gender Matter for Promotion in Science? Evidence from Physicists in France

In this study, we examine the promotion dynamics at the French Institute of Physics (INP) in CNRS, one of the largest European public research organizations. We construct a long panel combining a dataset on the career histories of INP scientists with survey data. Using event history analysis, we find that, having controlled for scientific productivity, female and male physicists have the same promotion rate from junior to senior positions. However, we also find that promotion factors such as family characteristics, mentoring, professional network, research responsibilities have different impacts on female and male researchers.