Gender inequalities in academia are clearly visible in terms of participation, publications, citations, and access to permanent positions. However, these differences are usually measured through aggregate outcomes, making it difficult to separate individual performance from the structure of collaboration networks. To understand how gender inequality persists across academic careers, we need to ask not only whether men and women differ in output, but also whether they occupy different positions in the networks through which visibility, mentorship, and opportunity circulate.

In this talk, Sergi Novell-Masot examines this question in the case of physics, using APS publication data to relate gendered career trajectories to latent measures of productivity and prominence and to the associated coauthorship networks. With that, three main questions are explored: (i) Which network characteristics are associated with later career success? (ii) How does gender homophily shape student-PI and coauthorship relations? and (iii) Do productivity, prominence, and network structure fully explain the observed gendered differences in the probability of becoming PI?