When Neutral Policies Fail to Level the Field: Gendered Responses to Innovation Mandates

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 9: Women in Academia

Abstract

To disrupt the status quo of persistent inequality in scientific production, institutions increasingly implement "neutral" interventions like Open Access (OA) mandates. But do these organizational practices truly create a more equitable landscape, or do they inadvertently reproduce disparities by imposing hidden costs on marginalized groups? This study rigorously assesses whether organizational mandates serve as effective tools for long-term equity. Analyzing a comprehensive longitudinal dataset of 110,166 publications (2008–2024) from Quebec teaching hospitals, I employ a difference-in-differences design to isolate the causal impact of the 2015 and 2019 OA policies. Results reveal a striking "gendered compliance spike": immediately following policy shocks, female researchers exhibit a transient, disproportionate surge in adoption to signal professional legitimacy. Crucially, this effect fades as the practice normalizes. This challenges the assumption that universal mandates yield equitable outcomes; instead, they often burden underrepresented scholars with the invisible work of validating institutional changes. By exposing the limitations of top-down mandates, this research argues that to genuinely put sociology to work for a more equitable society, we must move beyond compliance-based interventions. Effective solutions must address the root causes of professional stratification, shifting the heavy burden of equity work from marginalized individuals to mechanisms of institutional redistribution.

Author

• Zhuoyue Pang, McGill University