This $288,779 National Science Foundation project grant under the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences program (CFDA 47.075) will fund research at the University of Iowa from September 2022 through August 2024 to advance understanding of gender gaps in academic science. The interdisciplinary team will analyze publication records of over 90 million researchers worldwide to develop novel topic fit indices measuring subject congruence between new collaborations and existing work. These indices will be tested as critical mechanisms explaining individual- and field-level productivity and impact differences between male and female scholars using path analysis and multilevel modeling. Findings aim to inform institutional diversity policies by examining potential influences of gender role expectations on collaboration patterns and productivity penalties over time across disciplines.