The engagement gap: exploring gender differences in university-industry collaboration activities

In recent years, the debate about the marginality of women in academic science has been extended to academics’ engagement with industry and their commercial efforts. Analyzing multi-source data for a large sample of UK physical and engineering scientists and employing a matching technique, this study suggests women academics to engage less and in different ways than their male colleagues of similar status in collaboration activities with industry. We then argue – and empirical assess - these differences can be mitigated by the social context in which women scientists operate, including the presence of women in the local work setting and their wider discipline, and the institutional support for women’s careers in their organization. We explore the implications of these findings for policies to support women’s scientific and technical careers and engagement with industry.