Gender Differences in Societal Orientation and Output of Individual Scientists Inge van der Weijden, Zohreh Zahedi, Ulle Must and Ingeborg Meijer Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University Estonian Research Council, Estonia STI Conference 2014 4 September 2014
22
Embed
Gender differences in societal orientation and output of individual scientists
Presentation at the STI 2014 conference Gender differences in societal orientation and output of individual scientists Authors: Inge van der Weijden, Zohreh Zahedi, Ulle Must and Ingeborg Meijer
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
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
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.