Gender Differences in Societal Orientation and Output

of Individual Scientists

Inge van der Weijden, Zohreh Zahedi, Ulle Must and Ingeborg MeijerCentre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University

Estonian Research Council, Estonia

STI Conference 20144 September 2014

Outline of the presentation

• Introduction

• Methodology

• Preliminary Results

• Future research

2

3

Introduction (1): Women in Science

• Equally represented in Master and PhD phase (Eurostat 2013)

• Underrepresented in Tenure Track & Faculty Positions (e.g. Chesterman et al 2005)

• Pay-gap; in Belgium net -€387/month (Levecque et al 2014)

4

Introduction (2): Gender Gaps in Scientific Output

• Productivity gap (e.g. Larivière et al 2011)– Women are less productive in terms of no WoS publications– In Public Health: this gap started after postdoc phase (van der

Weijden and Calero Medina 2014)

• Last-author position gap (e.g. West 2013)– Women are under-represented in last authorship– in Public Health: this gap is becoming smaller in higher/more

prestigious positions (van der Weijden and Calero Medina 2014)

• International collaboration gap (e.g. Barrios et al 2013)– Women are less involved in international collaboration– In Public Health: this gap started after postdoc phase (van der

Weijden and Carelo Medina 2014)

Introduction (3): Societal quality/impact / relevance

5

• Economic returns

• Cultural returns

• Social returns

• Scientific returns

Scientific interactio

ns

Professional

interactions

Private interaction

s

Public interaction

s

The added value created by connecting research to societal practice, which is based on productive interaction and is complementary to the scientific quality

6

More attention towards societal quality/impact /relevance

Examples from the Netherlands:

• Research-funding agencies increasingly ask about the explicit societal relevance or anticipated societal impact of proposed research – Dutch research council (NWO) asks all grant applicants to the innovational

research incentive scheme to ‘provide information on the potential for the wider utilisation of knowledge resulting from their proposed research’. This information will be taken into account when assessing their proposals.

• One of the criteria of quality assurance systems of academic research– SEP 2015-2012: ‘The committee assesses the quality, scale and relevance

of contributions targeting specific economic, social or cultural target groups, of advisory reports for policy, of contributions to public debates, and so on. The point is to assess contributions in areas that the research unit has itself designated as target areas’

7

Aim of the study / Research Questions

What are gender differences with regard to:

• Researchers’ views about the increasing emphasis on the societal quality/relevance/impact;

• Researchers’ attitudes towards the way in which impact of scientific production is measured and evaluated;

• Different types of direct societal output products produced by research groups.

Is there a gender gap in societal orientation/output?

Hypothesis: Men are more focused towards the scientific recognition and reward cycle’, and less towards societal orientation and output

8

Methodology

9

Datasets

• The Academic Leadership Dataset (Belder et al 2012) – Survey data 2010-2011

– 458 biomedical and health principle investigators

– 351 males; 107 females [rr 25%]

– The Netherlands

• The Peer Review Practices Dataset (Must, Otsus & Mustajoki 2012)– Web-survey data 2011

– Part of FP7 project ‘ACUMEN’

– 2114 respondents

– 66 countries

• In both studies we conducted gender analyses (SPSS)

10

Measures (1)

• Societal Research Goals (van der Weijden et al 2012)– Address medical problems in society

– To strengthen innovation in health

– Translate results to policy implications

• Productive interactions (Spaapen & van Drooge 2012) with different stakeholders– Professionals in health care

– Pharmaceutical industry

– Patient organizations

– Policy makers

– General public

Measures (2)

12 types of societal output products (based on van der Weijden et al 2012)

Clinical guidelines

Policy reports

Publications in professional or policy journals

Contributions to public media broadcast

Presentations for a lay audience

Contributions to professional or policy symposia & conferences

Training for policy makers

Membership of committees convened to draft guidelines or policy recommendations

Membership of committee funding societally-oriented research

Editorships of journals targeted at professionals

Patents

Patients information brochures

12

Results

Opinions of Research Leaders on Societal Research Goals

The growing attention focused on societal impact of health research has meant that research within my group:

Five point scale ranging from 1=strongly disagree till 5=strongly agree

13

14

Opinions of Research Leaders on Research Communication with Stakeholders

The growing attention focused on societal impact of health research has meant an increase in interactions with various stakeholder:five point scale ranging from 1=strongly disagree till 5=strongly agree

15

Proportion of Male and Female PI’s who produce Societal Output

16

Preferences of Postdocs on the use of Societal Indicators

measured on a five point scale ranging from 1=strongly disagree till 5=strongly agree

17

Conclusions

General Conclusions (1)

• Overall, female respondents are more positive about:– The societal orientation of their work;

– Their interaction with different stakeholders;

• For 9 out of 12 types of societal output, more women than male are active in producing them.

• The other three (in which male are more active) are more strongly related to:– Recognition (clinical guidelines and editorship)

– Entrepreneurial behavior (patents, and female research leaders collaborate less than male research leaders with industry)

18

19

General Conclusions (2)

• Career phase is important: male postdocs are less focusing on societal interactions than females > societal quality of research is not critical for academic career advancement

• Negative statement: As long as researchers are only judged on their publications, valorization and societal impact of research will be no priority, regardless of (international) policy.

• Positive statement: Given the stronger emphasis on valorization and societal impact in policy, women will be able to close the gender gap because they are more oriented towards these type of activities.

20

Next Steps

• Collect qualitative data: interviews with scientists in different phases of their careers;

• Compare our results with bibliometric / WoS data;

• Communicate our results to policy makers and research funders;

• Contribution to ongoing discussions such as Science in Transition, Human Resource career policy.

21

Thank you!

Want to know more.....contact us at:

i.c.m.van.der.weijden@cwts.leidenuniv.nl

z.zahedi.2@cwts.leidenuniv.nl

Ulle.Must@etag.ee

i.meijer@cwts.leidenuniv.nl

Introduction (3)

Science contribution to:

• Public goals, strategy

• Lisbon agreement

• Triple helix of innovation

• Societal challenges

Scientific results

Publication, presentation, citation

Transfer of knowledge (valorisation)

Socio-economic benefit

22