Social Science and Impact Assessment Unit, International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, Nairobi, Kenya.
Office of International Programs, College of Agricultural Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, Philadelphia, PA, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2020 Dec 14;15(12):e0241915. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0241915. eCollection 2020.
Women's underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) impedes progress in solving Africa's complex development problems. As in other regions, women's participation in STEM drops progressively moving up the education and career ladder, with women currently constituting 30% of Africa's STEM researchers. This study elucidates gender-based differences in PhD performance using new survey data from 227 alumni of STEM PhD programs in 17 African countries. We find that, compared to their male counterparts, sampled women had about one less paper accepted for publication during their doctoral studies and took about half a year longer to finish their PhD training. Negative binomial regression models provide insights on the observed differences in women's and men's PhD performance. Results indicate that the correlates of publication productivity and time to PhD completion are very similar for women and men, but some gender-based differences are observed. For publication output, we find that good supervision had a stronger impact for men than women; and getting married during the PhD reduced women's publication productivity but increased that of men. Becoming a parent during the PhD training was a key reason that women took longer to complete the PhD, according to our results. Findings suggest that having a female supervisor, attending an institution with gender policies in place, and pursuing the PhD in a department where sexual harassment by faculty was perceived as uncommon were enabling factors for women's timely completion of their doctoral studies. Two priority interventions emerge from this study: (1) family-friendly policies and facilities that are supportive of women's roles as wives and mothers and (2) fostering broader linkages and networks for women in STEM, including ensuring mentoring and supervisory support that is tailored to their specific needs and circumstances.
女性在科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）领域的代表性不足，阻碍了非洲解决复杂发展问题的进展。与其他地区一样，女性在 STEM 领域的参与度随着教育和职业阶梯的上升而逐渐下降，目前女性仅占非洲 STEM 研究人员的 30%。本研究使用来自非洲 17 个国家的 227 名 STEM 博士课程校友的新调查数据，阐明了博士表现中的性别差异。我们发现，与男性相比，抽样女性在博士研究期间发表的论文数量平均减少了一篇，完成博士培训的时间延长了大约半年。负二项回归模型为观察到的女性和男性博士表现差异提供了深入了解。结果表明，发表生产力和完成博士学位时间的相关因素对女性和男性非常相似，但观察到一些性别差异。对于发表成果，我们发现，良好的监督对男性的影响比对女性的影响更大；在攻读博士期间结婚会降低女性的发表生产力，但会增加男性的发表生产力。根据我们的研究结果，成为博士培训期间的父母是女性完成博士学位所需时间更长的主要原因。研究结果表明，拥有女性导师、在有性别政策的机构就读、以及在被认为没有教职员工性骚扰的部门攻读博士学位，这些都是女性及时完成博士学业的有利因素。本研究提出了两个优先干预措施：（1）支持女性作为妻子和母亲的角色的家庭友好政策和设施；（2）促进 STEM 领域的女性建立更广泛的联系和网络，包括确保针对她们的特定需求和情况提供指导和监督支持。
