Using initials to promote gender neutrality when publishing as a female? As I work my way through my academic career (second-year PhD student), I am confronted with many stats and instances of gender bias in the publishing process (see references below). Of course for double-blind peer reviews, this is not an issue, but for others it may be. I’ve also seen stats that indicate that female first-authored papers receive fewer citations, even after taking into account the historical gender lag of fewer female publications.

So the question I’ve been pondering is: Should I use my initials (first and middle) when submitting papers as an attempt to introduce gender neutrality into my work? I am lucky that I have a relatively unique last name (nothing like Smith) so I’m not very worried about identity. 

Is this a good idea? Are there any further pros and cons I may not have considered?

References


Michał Krawczyk and Magdalena Smyk – Author׳s gender affects rating of academic articles: Evidence from an incentivized, deception-free laboratory experiment
Erin Hengel – Publishing while Female. Are women held to higher standards? Evidence from peer review
Rachael Pells – Understanding the Extent of Gender Gap in Citations
If you feel at risk in your profession for such things, then, certainly, establish a professional persona for yourself that will help assure fairness. Whether it is necessary or not, or backed up by statistics, is irrelevant. If you feel at risk, do what you think is best. 

I would also suggest that you get some advice from a female mentor or professor about this. What have their experiences been? I'd guess their advice would be pretty good. 

But I'll add, that you should think about making that a permanent persona that won't change in the future. You want your complete history to be traceable through a single name, even as your life changes. You can be A professionally, and B personally, as long as no fraud is intended. 

I once should have changed my name, but didn't. Things would have been better for me had I done so at the time. The issue was completely different, but it had consequences.