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International research collaboration among women engineers: frequency and perceived barriers, by regions

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Abstract

International research collaboration is on the rise—and at the same time, women face potential barriers. Based on responses to surveys conducted among groups of women engineers, this article addresses (1) women’s frequency of international research collaboration; (2) the barriers to collaboration reported for both self and for other women; and (3) the patterns among women students as well as professionals, by national regions. Findings of this study have implications for policies to broaden participation in the increasingly important arena of international research collaboration, based on women in engineering, the scientific field in which women are most underrepresented. This makes the case focal for the study of women, science, and policy.

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Notes

  1. Coauthorship is a common indicator of collaboration, but other forms of collaboration exist that result in knowledge creation, including technologies, patents, and software (Bozeman et al. 2013; Katz and Martin 1997).

  2. Of the 915 persons who applied, duplicate replies and surveys were removed (to the extent identified/known) and (4) replies and surveys of men were removed for this present analysis focusing on women.

  3. The form of this question varied somewhat between the three waves of application, but for each wave, the responses to the questions were checked and coded so that students were coded as “students” and those who were “not students” as professionals (types of ranks/positions).

  4. In Fig. 1, the residual bar is for self-reported responses that are not classifiable into the numeric categories of prior international research collaboration, represented by “at least one” (3.1 %) or “other” (0.9 %) with responses, for examples, of “discussed a project, some follow-up,” “will teach an international course,” and “did undergraduate education and thesis in Europe.”

  5. As the Method points out, marriage and children do not appear to be impediments to applying for the summit. Thus, the lower reported importance of family conditions as a barrier to international research collaboration is not an artifact of the group applying.

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Acknowledgements

The research reported here was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation (award #1047714). For comments on an earlier draft of this article, we thank Carolina Canibano.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332-0345, USA

    Mary Frank Fox & Diana Roldan Rueda

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332-0245, USA

    Mary Lynn Realff

  3. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30032-0280, USA

    Jillian Morn

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Correspondence to Mary Frank Fox.

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Fox, M.F., Realff, M.L., Rueda, D.R. et al. International research collaboration among women engineers: frequency and perceived barriers, by regions. J Technol Transf 42, 1292–1306 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-016-9512-5

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